


Mistaken

by samworth



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: Abduction, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mistaken Identity, Recovery, dealing with the aftermath, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:13:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24236329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samworth/pseuds/samworth
Summary: Charlie enjoyed teaching and supported his students' desire for knowledge and change. But as desire overruled knowledge, Charlie was met with the disastrous consequences - consequences his brother had to pay. A tale about mistaken identity in two parts, the mistaking and its aftermath
Relationships: Charlie Eppes/Amita Ramanujan, Larry Fleinhardt/Megan Reeves, Robin Brooks/Don Eppes
Kudos: 22





	1. Part I - Mistaken 1

**Author's Note:**

> Part One spans the chapter 1 to 3 and was written for a Mistaken Identity Challenge. The challenge was to write a story about mistaken identity with a minimum length of 1,000 words and maximum length of 8,000 words.
> 
> Part Two is the dealing with the aftermath. That part spans 5 chapters.
> 
> Unbetaed.
> 
> Posting every weekday until complete.

The knock startled Charlie, and he looked up from his laptop. His door, left slightly ajar, opened and his brother Don poked in his head, smirking. "Still working?"

Snorting, Charlie ignored him and finished the last sentence of his email. "Not only FBI agents work long hours," Charlie said. Out of the corner of his eyes, he watched Don rubbing across his forehead as if he could brush away the weariness etched on his face. "I am a full professor for applied mathematics at CalSci, the famous university," Charlie continued. "I'm sure you have heard me talking about it once." His brother dropped down in Charlie's visitor chair while a short chuckle chased away some of his tiredness. "I'm always busy, even if I don't consult for you and the FBI," Charlie grumbled in a mock-serious tone.

Don laughed out loud. "And I appreciate it. Your last numbers really hit the jackpot."

His last numbers had been an easy hot zone calculation for him, mapping areas Don's serial rapist avoided statically significantly. People tended to note things that were present, but missing things also provided important clues for Charlie. Missing things like the gun and its holster that should have been clipped on Don's belt. He was so used to see his brother with his badge and gun, the contrast seemed wrong on many levels. "You got him?" Charlie asked carefully. He had been around long enough to understand the implied meaning of a missing gun and Don's dropped shoulders.

"What?" Don's eyes snapped back to the present, and he stared at Charlie. "Oh, yeah. Thanks. We got him through his job." Don's eyes traveled further and stared longingly at Charlie's coffee can. "We learned from our mistakes and not only checked the people living in a hot zone but also who works there."

"Everybody okay?" Charlie lowered his head and tried not to stare too much at the empty space on Don's belt where his gun should have been.

Don gave him a one sided shrug. "Nobody hurt from our side." His evasive answer sent out enough clues that Don wasn't ready to talk about it yet.

Nodding, Charlie checked his email before he hit send. Since Dr. Mildred Finch had overtaken the math department, his administrative work had doubled. Only his knowledge that she didn't do it in retaliation for his work for the FBI but because she needed to get the funding and used his work to get it, helped him finishing his part of the deal on time. Or maybe because Millie still dated their father Alan and therefore had a perfect notification relay model if she hadn't time to come over herself. But now that this was done, he had to finish his grading.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eyes, he saw his brother fishing Charlie's coffee can. It was one of the expensive ones with an internal heating system. "Hey! That's mine!" Charlie called out and made a move to grab it. But Don's reflexes were faster, and he secured his prize. "One of my students bought it for me as a thank-you for my help." Charlie pouted and crossed his arms. He would have given Don his coffee. But only if he had asked nicely.

Don grinned broadly. "Say, are you corruptible?" He took a sip, slurping the dark liquid to show his enjoyment. "Who would have thought?"

"No!" Charlie denied. "It was an anonymous gift from a student. It was just left on my desk with a small note. As long as I don't know who bought it, I am not biased in my grading," Charlie explained while he looked for the papers to grade. Usually, Amita would do the grading, but she was finishing her second thesis and deserved the break. Pausing, Charlie remembered where he had last seen the papers. Now he just needed to find his keys.

"Well," Don said while he climbed to his feet. "Thanks for the coffee. But now I have to go tracking Megan down. I don't know why Larry has a phone if he can't be reached by it."

"Oh, Megan's here for Larry?" Charlie grinned.

"Don't get any thoughts," Don grumbled even as he also grinned. "She has to call off the date. We have a witness to protect and I'm on desk duty."

Charlie searched through his bag and his desk. Apparently, Special Agent Megan Reeves was supposed to have the evening free to go on a date with Charlie's good friend Larry Fleinhardt, professor for astrophysics. But after whatever happened that had put Don on desk duty and his gun into an evidence bag, Megan as his relief supervisor had to take over. "True love," Charlie singsonged, drawing a real smile on Don's face. "True love doesn't need a cell phone." The FBI agent and the absent-minded professor, Charlie shook his head. He was still waiting for the film version of that story.

"Yeah, but I still need to drop her off at the hotel. And I won't wait until Larry could be found."

With a relieved shout, Charlie finally found his keys in his pockets. He held them up. "Well, as you have drunk my coffee you also can get the papers from my car."

"Oh yeah?" In Don's eyes gleamed the challenge but his words seemed slightly slurred.

Not bothering to answer, Charlie threw the keys to his brother. But this time Don's usually excellent reflexes left him. The keys dropped down with a short bang. "If you ask so nicely," Don trailed off. "But really, we need to work on your throwing technique." Trying to hide his failure, Don smirked before he bent down to retrieve the keys.

Charlie snorted. "My throwing technique is far better than your catching. The papers are in the trunk."

Don played with the keys as he pondered his options. Then he shrugged. "Fine, let's give Megan a little more time. Colby could use the break, too."

"Colby Granger and Megan have the job together?" Sometimes, Don's co-workers almost seemed like his own co-workers. Suddenly, Don tilted to one side and ran into the door frame. "Everything all right?" Charlie asked.

"Yes," Don mumbled and it sounded strange, almost as if he was drunk. Maybe he was just embarrassed. "I'll be right back."

Before Charlie could ask again, Don stumbled out of the door. Not wanting to irritate him, Charlie remained by his desk. Don had to be really tired to give in so fast.

* * *

"Charlie, you're still here?" His father Alan walked through the door. "I thought you and Amita would be home by now."

"Why?"

"Oh," his father hesitated. "Just so."

Grinning broadly, Charlie stood up. "I see. You're here for Millie."

"Yes. Do you have a problem with that?" It was both a question and a challenge.

"No," Charlie said. His mother had been a wise woman to make Alan promise to start dating again after her death. He just would have preferred somebody else but his boss.

"Where's your brother?" Alan asked. "I met Colby outside, and he's waiting for both Megan and Don to come back."

"He should be back by now. He just wanted to get some papers from my car. Strange." Charlie grabbed his cell phone and hit speed dial. Usually, his brother either answered on the second ring or he had it off. But this time it rang several times, until the call finally connected. Relieved, Charlie smirked. "Well, dearest brother of mine. Did you get lost on the way to the car?"

Instead of the usual snapped 'Eppes' or a smart response, only an eerie silence greeted him. Something cold gripped Charlie's heart and it started to beat faster and faster. Before he could ask again, a voice answered him. "So, you're his brother, huh?"

That wasn't Don's voice. Cold fear stole his breath. Something had been visible on his face as Alan hurried over. With a suddenly dry mouth, Charlie tried to form a question. "Who is -" The line went dead. Slowly, Charlie lowered his cell, his hands trembling.

"Charlie?"

Not wasting time, Charlie ran out of his office. He had to check on his brother.

* * *

Frantic. This was the right word to describe everything since Charlie had run into Megan. A fast explanation that left her with more questions than answers but still allowed her to extract the crucially first parts of the puzzle. First, a call to Colby to check the parking lot and Charlie's car. Followed by a call to FBI control asking for a report and a trace. Finally, she also tried Don's cell but like Alan had said it went straight to voice mail.

"Megan, what's going on?" Alan demanded, the worry etched on his face. Panic spread fast and easy between human beings and the call had left Charlie panicking.

"We finished our current case. Our suspect is in the hospital under guard. Maybe Don just lost his cell and somebody had found it as Charlie called?" She suggested with a smile that felt false. Don was as attached to his phone as to his watch. Either he turned it off or it had to be taken off him. While this day had been hard he still had a job to do and Megan knew without a doubt, he wouldn't slack off. That only left the other option.

"Megan," Charlie said and his voice quivered. "That wasn't Don. Something -"

Before Megan could find an answer for Charlie, her own cell rang. She snapped it open after a short glance at the caller id. "Colby?"

"You need to call it in," Colby Granger said.

Hesitating, Megan licked her dry lips. Colby's background in counterintelligence and his years in the Army had prepared him to deal with unsuspected attacks and strange circumstances. Working as a special agent for the FBI had just honed this ability. If Colby started with the conclusion, this really was bad. "What you've got?"

"I found Don's badge beneath Charlie's car. The car has scratches and," Colby reported, his voice steady and controlled. Too controlled. "Also, you can cancel the trace on Don's phone. I've found it next to the car, smashed."

Accepting a call from a lost and found phone had been a possibility, but accepting a call and then smashing the phone eliminated every other good option including theft. "Anybody around?"

"It's a campus. There is always somebody around and they have a lot of cameras we need to check. I'm working on it, but we need more people. I've called David in and I'll send the next one back trying to recover prints or something from the phone."

Megan nodded. "I'll make the call." It would bring backup and help, the full force of an FBI field office. Yet, it seemed impossibly small and unreliable for the task in front of her. Carefully masking her own fear, she turned back to father and brother. "We need to assume somebody attacked Don."

Alan gasped while Charlie stared at her with a pleading and demanding look in his eyes.

* * *

_TBC_


	2. Part I - Mistaken 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!

Don woke up. If this could be called waking up. Groaning, Don settled on a better description - he returned to consciousness. He shivered slightly but needed a long time until he figured out the reason for it - he was cold. His throat hurt and as he wanted to swallow he realized that he was parched.

Something was wrong. That much he knew. But he had trouble to come up with a better report. Trying to swallow, he realized that he was parched. Hadn't he had this realization already? Maybe.

His head hurt and Don tried to raise himself up. His shoulders had barely left the ground, hard and cold, as the nausea he hadn't felt yet, overpowered him and left him retching. Nothing but bile came up as he hadn't eaten in a long time. He only had wanted to finish his report, so he could wash the images out of his mind with lots of alcohol.

Maybe this had happened. Maybe he was just hungover.

With a lot of grunting, he raised himself slightly up until he could lean against a cold wall. This couldn't be called sitting, but he had put some space between the meager contents of his stomach and himself. Everything around him seemed cold and hard. And dark. Not to forget it was dark. He should search for a light switch. Maybe then he would figure out where he was.

Heavy foot steps echoed around him and marched straight into his head. Don groaned again. Something was wrong. He had already been over this. Something was wrong, wrong with him.

Suddenly, a door was pushed open and bright, endlessly bright light streamed in.

Don jerked. Raising his right hand to shield his eyes, his left arm followed the movement, and he had to drag it with him. Finally, he realized that his wrists were tied together. Worry joined the nausea and Don wished he could think clearly.

"Horatio, what did you mix up? He's totally wasted!"

Don kept his eyes squeezed shut. No matter how interesting it would be to see the owner of the voice, the nausea, headache and disorientation couldn't take more than the loud voice and brightness of the light.

"I told you I'm no expert. If you hadn't smashed his phone, we wouldn't need to ask for the number just yet," a second voice replied, sounding frustrated.

Don noted in the back of his mind that he had heard two male voices. He wasn't sure how long he would be able to remember this. But it seemed important. Two male voices.

"All right, professor, what's your brother's number? I need to call him," a harsh voice demanded.

Breathing in and breathing out, Don fought against the dizziness and nausea. Somebody had asked a question. A question about a number. Belatedly, Don realized that the voice had spoken about a professor. He wasn't a professor. His brother was one. For math.

"Hey, I'm talking to you, professor. Pay attention. You surely want to be saved by your big FBI brother, don't you?" The first voice boomed again. This time the demand was accompanied by a soft kick in his thigh. Don jerked back.

"Maybe he isn't the math professor," the other voice suggested.

Horatio. A Horatio had mixed something up. Something that had him mixed up. Something - a hand grabbed his hair and pulled his head back. Don made a garbling sound.

"He drank your little cocktail and went to the right car. He is it." Another shake. "Hey, professor, you're a math genius, right?"

Trying to make his tongue work, Don thought about the answer. Math. Right, math was his brother. The hand in his hair, shook his head until he hit the wall behind him sending shock waves of pain through his body and making him drop his hands. He needed to get a hair cut. His last case has needed his full attention and therefore he had postponed something banal as a hair cut to later. Don chuckled. At least this way, he had been saved from an accident. Charlie's last visit at the barbers had ended in a disaster where all of his curls had decorated the floor and not his head anymore. Now he looked like Don. He blinked. What had he been thinking about?

"Hey! I'm talking to you." The next words were accompanied by another harsh shaking. Again the bile rose in his throat. "Let's test this. Tell me what is one thousand five hundred and thirty-two times twenty-three thousand eight hundred and eighty-one?"

Don swallowed hard. Math. Bad guy. Someone had mistaken him for his brother. Just for fun he answered: "Thirty nine million two hundred thousand five hundred and forty-five." If they had wanted math, they should have asked Charlie. But if they wanted an answer, an answer he could give them. Maybe not a correct answer, but an answer nonetheless.

"See, it's the math professor," the voice cheered and pushed Don's head again against the wall.

"Fine. But you should be nicer, or we are going to be in deep trouble," soft voice said.

The chuckle sounded so harsh, Don had no trouble to assign the voice to the right man. "Trouble is want we want. So, now I'm just need the number."

Don blinked. But before he could open his mouth to blurt out a number, the soft voice returned. "Serena has just texted the number. Leave him alone."

Harsh voice, soft voice, a Horatio and a Serena. Don tried to fix the names into his brain. These pieces of information were important. For what? He didn't know, but he still could list all four items as harsh voice shut the door again and plunged Don into the darkness.

Something was wrong, wrong with him.

* * *

Out of the blue, Charlie's cell rang. He dropped his notepad and fumbled for the device. "Unknown number," he read out loud.

"Answer it. It could be anybody," Megan instructed Charlie while simultaneously trying to calm him down with a smile as his breaths came faster and faster. "I'm right here. If necessary, I'll take over." If this was whoever had taken Don, they were fast, too fast as except the campus police, Colby and her were still the only ones on scene.

Slowly, Charlie nodded. Then he touched his cell in a way as if he needed to touch something horrible. Snapping it open, he finally allowed the call to connect. As agreed, he put the call on loud speaker.

"Yes?"

"I thought you maybe didn't want to save your brother seeing how long you needed to answer my call." The voice was neither distorted nor spoke the man in a way to hide his identity. This was both good and terrifying. Charlie showed his thumb, the agreed signal that he recognized the voice. Then she mouthed 'proof of life', reminding Charlie to ask for it.

"I want to speak to my brother. I need to hear that he's still -" Charlie broke off. His lips trembled, while his expression reflected the horror he felt.

"You can talk to him soon enough. First you need to call in a press conference."

Colby raised an eyebrow showing the same confusion Megan felt. "A press conference," Charlie voiced the question both agent had.

"Yes, Mister FBI agent, I'll send you a manifest for you to read aloud."

"Agent?" Charlie asked again, his voice so toneless, the question mark at the end was lost.

"Yes, you are an FBI agent, aren't you? If a few thousand people die because of the climate change nobody cares as long as it doesn't happen in your neighborhood. But if a beloved math professor dies then people will listen. Professor Eppes was always willing to listen. He tried to green the university and helped the research. While the FBI had nothing better to do, then prosecuting the people who are trying to save this planet. We won't hurt him as long as you do what we say." The voice took a deep breath. "If the FBI is useful for something, it's calling in a press conference!"

Charlie paled rapidly, his white fingers clenched around the small plastic. The realization shook the room - they had mistaken Don for Charlie. For a moment Megan feared he would snap the cell in two. Grabbing the phone, she took charge of the call. "This is Special Agent Megan Reeves," she introduced herself. "Before we can talk about a press conference, we need to have a proof of life." She forced the words past her dry throat. If the kidnappers had prepared their mission she would get Don on the phone and warn him or get a clue from him. Either way, talking to Don was her highest priority.

The long silence on the other end made Megan fear the worst. Colby had guided Charlie to the sofa. While it may had seemed like a nice gesture, Colby had done it to ensure that Charlie couldn't blurt out the truth by mistake. They had made clear what they thought about the FBI. Don's chances increased as long as they thought him to be Charlie.

"We will only talk to Agent Eppes," the voice on the other end finally snarled.

"If you know so much about the FBI then you know that we are not allowed to work cases involving family," Megan said and was proud of how steady her voice sounded.

"And yet the fed answered."

"To save a life, we always use the help of the family. Up until now we didn't know that your demands are political ones."

"Political? It's about nothing else but survival of our planet!" Anger, clear and unmasked anger forced its way through the tiny loudspeaker into the room.

Without warning the call ended dumping the room in controlled silence. With her call to ADIC Wright, all necessary tools were at her disposal including tracing and access to mobile phone data. Colby had started all of this the moment it had been clear who was calling. She would get the word the moment the technicians in the office had any results. Until then, Megan stared at Colby. How could this happened?

Colby seemed to guess her question and shrugged. "The brotherly resemblance had been pretty strong the last two weeks." He rubbed at his neck. "Don has his hair longer, Charlie's hair is shorter." He screwed up his face. "It was dark. He went to the right car. It's possible, that -"

Alan rushed in. "What about my boy?" He asked, trying to mask the fear that shone in his eyes.

Megan swallowed hard. "Alan -"

"They mistook Don for me. I was the intended target." Charlie jumped up. "They are going to kill Don the moment they find out he isn't ..." He broke off. Shoving Colby away, he rushed to the door, but Colby stopped him, an easy move for the experienced agent. Talking in a hushed voice, Colby explained what Megan already knew. Charlie had been the target. That changed everything. For one, they needed to keep it quiet and two, Charlie would need protection.

"Megan?" Alan asked again. He went over to Charlie and put his arms around him, providing and seeking comfort.

"They were after Charlie," Megan repeated.

"And?" Alan looked straight at her over Charlie's head. Megan felt the power of his questioning gaze.

"We're working on it." Never make a promise you can't keep.

"He's alive, right?"

Never make a promise you can't keep, she firmly told herself. Especially to someone you consider family. "We will find him."

Alan nodded. He had heard her. Loud and clear. Even the things she hadn't said.

* * *

Trembling, Charlie sat on the sofa, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. The black boards mocked him with their white numbers. Algorithms and calculation from a better time, a time when he had to grade tests and worry about the next paper he wanted to publish. A time when the worry about his brother was only an issue in the back of his mind. A problem he could carry like a blanket around his shoulder, always there but never too heavy.

Amita sat right next to him, consoling him by stroking his back and drawing small circles on it. But her movement was off and the resulting drawings would never result in a perfect circle. He cringed. Charlie didn't want her here but as he tried to send her away, Megan had intervened. His girlfriend was in as much danger from the relationship with him as his brother. His brother, the FBI agent, who carried a gun. Or should have carried a gun.

"Charlie?" David addressed him out of the many people running around. The room was full of FBI agents going over maps, lists and security camera tapes. But it was a big campus and Charlie had parked in an uncovered area. The cameras didn't help them.

"Anything new?" Using the opportunity, Charlie jumped up and away from Amita. He didn't want to be a danger to her.

David Sinclair, Afro-American FBI agent from the Bronx who had fought hard to join the FBI, who had calmly defused a bomb by trusting his own memory and providing the necessary backup to his brother, that calm and dedicated agent stood in the doorway to Charlie's office and hesitated before he answered. "No."

Charlie crumbled down.

"Charlie," David started again. "Maybe you can help us."

"I can't -" The math professor glanced up to his boards. "I can't help you. I don't-" Words failed him like numbers failed him. He wanted to get lost in the world of math, but not in the way it would help the FBI.

"It's about the call. Our technicians say they can't trace it as it was an IP call run over an anonymizing network. We can get the data through a court order. We just -" David had his phone in his hand, ready to call a judge the moment Charlie answered.

"Don't bother," Charlie interrupted him. "Even with all the data, it is impossible. An anonymizing network is designed to make it impossible to connect signals or to trace a signal to the origin of the call."

David exhaled while he slowly lowered his phone. "All right. Do you have any idea who could have targeted you? Did anybody contact you to ask you to consult or anything? Any protest group?"

Amita shook her head and Charlie followed her lead. "How could somebody take Don for me? We're nothing alike. We..." Charlie trailed off. Usually the gun and the way Don carried himself set them apart. But even without his gun and the weariness he had shown today, Don should have been able to make them pay for their mistake.

"How could somebody take Don, you really wanted to ask, right?" David crouched down in front of Charlie. "We're FBI agents. But we're also just human. I'm sure that Don didn't expect anything. He felt safe here and -"

"He had been hurt in the last arrest, right?" Charlie interrupted David. "He stumbled as I threw him the keys. Why didn't you call and said that -" Charlie flashed his eyes at David. If he had known that Don was hurt than he wouldn't have asked him to go to his car and none of this would have happened.

"He stumbled? You mean, he seemed strange to you?" David rose and his voice took on an urgent quality.

"Yes." Charlie underlined his answer by nodding. "After I threw him the keys to my car, which he failed to catch, he stumbled."

"Did he seem drunk to you?"

"He just took a sip of my coffee!" Charlie replied. "He wasn't drunk. He was just tired." Thinking about how Don stumbled out of his office, Charlie hesitated. "Really tired," he added.

"Charlie, this is important," David said. The urgency in his voice was mirrored by his body language and how he leaned forward. "Colby had found a witness who claimed to have seen you with two students, drunk. Could she have seen Don?"

"Don wasn't drunk!" Charlie repeated, furious on behalf of his brother and missing the implied charge that he could have been drunk on campus. "How can you-"

"Charlie! I'm not thinking drunk." David stopped him with a raised hand. "I'm thinking drugged. You said he drank some of your coffee? What coffee?"

"One of my students had brought it -" Charlie broke off as a terrifying thought crossed his mind.

"Where is the can now?" David asked.

Numb and terrified, Charlie rushed forward to his desk, right to the untouched can of coffee from an anonymous source.

* * *

Don was working on the rope that bound his zip-tied hands to a pipe. After he finally had started to retain a thought for longer than a second he had started to figure out a few things. Granted, he still couldn't remember what happened or where he was. Not even exactly why he was wherever he was, but he could remember four things. Harsh voice, soft voice, Horatio and Serena. And that he was tied to a pipe in a dark room. He assumed a cellar or steam tunnel.

Struggling to free himself, Don ground the cord against a bolt to fray the rope. He tried to be as silent as possible but somehow he had failed. Suddenly, the door opened. Again the light forced Don to shield his eyes, showing the damage he had already done to the rope.

"It's time for you to sleep a little longer. Your brother hasn't called it yet," Harsh voice said.

"I'd rather be awake, if it's all the same for you," Don snarled back. "And who are you?"

"Doesn't matter," Harsh voice said. Heavy steps neared and Don forced himself to lower his hands despite the feeling as if knifes were stabbed into his head and eyes. "Drink!" Harsh voice ordered but Don turned his head away.

"Fine, then I'll make you." A hand grabbed his hair and wrenched his head back.

"What are you doing!" another voice demanded.

With full force, Don's head was rammed against the wall. This time nausea wasn't needed for dry heaves to come. A bottle was pressed against his lips. Don didn't know if he should swallow, cough, puke or take a breath. But as another blow came, Don started to lose his cool. Suddenly, instincts overtook, and he fought for his life but somehow his body was refusing to be as useful as usually, resulting in a disarray of water in his mouth, coughing and blows all over his body. Something was wrong with him. But he had known that already.

From far away, or so it seemed, a female voice screeched. "Stop it! Stop it!" It sounded like a young woman screaming. Or maybe she just called out but in Don's ears he only heard a screeching. "Stop it. You're hurting him! You said you wouldn't hurt him!"

As Don slid down the wall unable to even bring up his hands to defend himself, he tried to remember that there was a girl. A girl, harsh voice, soft voice, Horatio and Serena. This was important to remember. Even if he didn't know why. But then the blackness swallowed him and carried him away into a painless void.

* * *

Megan watched Claudia, their ME, mixing a small drop of the coffee on a test strip. "If this turns blue," she said staring at the paper in front of her, "then the coffee was laced with GHB."

David had dusted the cup for prints but so far they had only been able to lift two prints, both most likely Don's from the position on the can. GHB, also known as the date rape drug, was easily to come by, hard to taste and a powerful drug.

Intently, they all stared at the test strip. "It's blue, right?" Megan asked as she detected the first bluish tint.

"Yes," Claudia nodded. "If it knocked Agent Eppes out, it has to be high dosed," she warned. "Dangerously high."

"But it would explain, why Don could be taken," Charlie said.

For Megan the confirmation about used drugs were bad news, Charlie seemed to consider them good news.

Suddenly, a commotion at the closed door to Charlie's office, interrupted the discussion. David pushed Charlie behind the bookcase while Megan went to the door and poked her head out. A campus police officer blocked the door providing security and arguing loudly with Dr. Mildred Finch. As the head of the math department, Megan couldn't keep her away without getting more attention. For the same reason, she had yet to bring Charlie away, she had to allow Millie in. Megan signaled her agreement and Dr Mildred Finch rushed in.

Strangely, she just had eyes for Alan, ignoring the present FBI agents. "Oh, Alan, I just heard," Millie said and embraced him. "I'm so sorry."

They had tried to keep it quiet but the gossip factory was working overtime.

Amita followed by Charlie left their hiding spot but froze as they saw Alan in a tight embrace. But their hesitation was nothing compared to the shock on Dr. Finch's face.

Millie pushed Alan away and stared at her own professor as if she was seeing a ghost. "Charlie! What are you doing here? I thought -"

And suddenly, the pieces clicked together. Rumor mill was fast but not so fast. Dr. Finch knew about the abduction, but not through the grapevine.

* * *

_TBC_


	3. Part I - Mistaken 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and for your kudos!

Dr. Mildred Finch nervously played with her glasses. "I don't want to ruin a young life. If I talk to you -"

"Dr. Finch," Megan started, "I was young once too and I did my fair share of stupid things. But there is a difference between a schoolboy prank and the participation in the abduction and drugging of a federal agent."

"Millie," Alan interrupted. Megan had wanted to send them away, but Alan had been determined to stay and Megan wasn't willing to play hardball yet. "Please, tell me what you know."

"To tell you, what I know, I've come here," Millie said. "I just didn't know-" She pointed to the agents. Apparently, she hadn't realized that the FBI were already present on the campus.

"Millie, where's my brother?" Charlie added his own voice to the mix and Megan started to consider a more radical move.

"I don't know," Millie said. Then she took a deep breath. "One of my students called me to ask for help." She hesitated and stared at Megan. "They, and I don't know who they are, had the idea how to be heard more clearly, how to change the world. But then it got out of hand."

"What happened?"

"She told me that they wanted to grab Professor Eppes, keep him hidden for a few days and have his brother calling in a press conference. Charlie is a well-known and well-liked professor, it would have made big news. And if the FBI calls a press conference..." she trailed off. "But then," she glanced to Alan and her voice dropped to a whisper, "but then something happened. She didn't say what, but she was crying and said over and over again, that they had promised not to hurt him and-"

"Hurt him? You mean she called you because they hurt him?" Alan voiced faster and with more emotion Megan's own question at the startling revelation.

Millie straightened. "She couldn't make them stop. That's when she called me to asked for help what she could do."

"And?"

"Before I could answer or ask her anything, the line suddenly went dead," Millie said. "At first I wasn't sure if it was a joke, so I wanted to make sure ... before I would call the police and ruin a young life -"

"Who called you, Dr. Finch?"

Millie sighed deeply. The life of the student she would name would be destroyed. She looked to Larry, Amita and Charlie as if she wanted to make sure that she had the other teachers support that it was necessary to violate the trust of her student. But Charlie was still fighting with his anger while Amita shared Alan's pain. Only Larry seemed to think about the deeper issues.

"Please, Millie," Alan added and changed the tone of the conversation from an interrogation, from an intellectual discussion about trust and students' rights to a father who feared for his son's life. "Please."

* * *

Three and a half hours. He had last talked to his brother three and a half hour ago. And now, Megan, Colby, David and the campus police were already making an arrest after Millie had given them a name. Serena Dillons. At first, it only had been a name and then a face. As far as Charlie could remember, he had never had her as his student. Larry had finally been found and shocked as he was brought up to speed. Together with Larry, a lot of officers and his father, Charlie waited near the door to the student dorm. He was done with playing games and hiding. Something in the way he had told Megan this had made her relenting.

"Where's my brother?" Charlie demanded the moment David led the young woman out of the door.

"We just wanted to change things," she said. Her dark hair framed a face that was still beautiful even as tears stream down.

"You could have organized a protest march or design a campaign but not choosing violence," Charlie snarled.

"But nobody is listening to us." She leaned forward and David had to shift his grip. "Nothing changes. We tried and tried and tried it. But nobody is listening."

He stepped near, his hands balled into fists. "That doesn't give you the right to -"

"Charlie, that's enough," Megan said and David stepped between Serena and Charlie.

"Charlie, let Megan do her job," his father suddenly said and started to pull him away. "We have to wait."

Letting himself be dragged away, Charlie watched Colby and David escorting Serena away. She knew where his brother was, she had been worried enough to call Millie for help, and then she didn't say where they were keeping him. Charlie's fingertips left marks on his palms.

"Charlie," his father started again, "this is not the way."

"We don't have time to wait. Haven't you heard the FBI ME? There was entirely too much GHB in the coffee. They don't care if they kill him with their drugs."

"Charlie, I know. But you can't make her tell you."

"Then what. Are we just waiting?"

"As long as you're fixed on your anger you won't be able to see straight."

"I'm thinking about my brother. Not my anger."

"You think about your powerlessness to change things," Larry said, "and that makes you angry. It's normal but as we just have seen it's also the path to more destruction than fixing."

"Larry!" Charlie was loosing his cool and patience for his friend.

"I merely suggest that you take your focus off the things you cannot control and onto the things you can control," Larry continued as if he hadn't seen Charlie's fury.

"What?"

"You cannot control that somebody took your brother. You cannot control when Ms. Dillons will share her knowledge. And while I have no doubt in Megan's ability to obtain all necessary information, this may take some time."

"Larry, we know that," Amita said playing peacemaker.

"But you still have a lot of resource you can use. You helped the FBI often enough with math in difficult situations."

"And how to -" Charlie paused.

"We could calculate a maximum range where they could have taken Don," Millie suggested. "We're talking about a short time frame and I don't think they used a car. If Serena was already back in her dorm, she couldn't have been gone far."

"No," Charlie shook his head, "we can do better - one of them was a student. Serena would have known where the cameras are but there's no way to move across campus or leave it without ever being caught on tape."

"Right," Amita snapped her fingers, "but we can figure out what camera to check first."

"Yes, but we can still do better," Charlie said and hurried off, forcing the rest of his friends and family to run after him. "They're not only evading cameras but also people. If we figure out the routes across campus with the least probability to run into people, we just have to check a few cameras."

A few cameras, that would save them a lot of time.

* * *

Megan tilted her head until she could read the sign above the entrance. Hospital. And again, all of it had ended in the hospital. After Charlie and the other mathematicians had calculated the most probably routes around campus, it had been easy to check the tapes. But it had been a surprise to see where Don had been taken.

Up until now, she had associated steam tunnels with Larry's tendency to work in strange places. Now after a short night and lots of reports, she realized that Ron Silar, Horatio Cruz and Serena Dillons had had a smart plan including the planned sudden return of Charlie in midst of a press conference. But they're impatience and overconfidence had been their downfall. Nothing had prepared the last two, Ron and Horatio, for a flash bang and two angry FBI agents rushing in. Colby and David had left them with no chance and had finished their mission just four hours after Don had been taken. They had been lucky, but they also had been smart.

She pulled out her cell and called Colby while she walked in. Colby had stayed the whole night with Don and the Eppes family at the hospital. From all primary interrogations and evidence, only three persons had been part of the plan, and they had all three of them in custody, but still nobody had argued and ADIC Wright had signed off the protection.

Following Colby's direction, Megan found the right area easily.

"Ah, coffee," Colby said in greeting and accepted the steaming hot cup, Megan had bought just across the street.

"You're welcome." She took a sip of her own.

Colby stared across the floor to a curtained area. "To think that just a sip of coffee got us in this mess."

"How is he?"

"Doc says he's going to be fine. GHB only needs a few hours to leave the body. It's a good thing, the kidnappers had thought him to be Charlie. They had held back in their attack and hitting, so the rest are just bruises that are going to heal on their own."

"Alan said as much on the phone last night." Megan paused. "But how is he?" she repeated her question.

Colby took a deep breath. "You know the funny videos on the internet?" He glanced at her. "About the kids that went to the dentist and then are stoned on the drive home?"

Slowly, Megan nodded. She had seen them. And yes, she also had laughed even if she hadn't wanted. She waited for Colby to finish.

"I always thought, it would be funny to see your boss drugged. To see Don drugged." Colby pushed the tip of his boot against the wall before he looked up. "But there's nothing funny about it. Nothing."

Taking another sip, Megan tried to prepare herself. If Colby couldn't find it in himself to make an inappropriate joke, it was bad.

* * *

Megan waited until the nurse had left, presumably to get the promised papers. Don played with the sleeve of the shirt he was wearing instead of the expected hospital gown. It had to be a new one as the old one had been stained. "Where are Alan and Charlie?"

"Sent them home, they were making me dizzy," Don said without looking up. It was a lie. Not the sending home part, but the explanation for it. "And if you're here for a report?" he asked and glanced to her out of the corner of his eyes. "I can save you some time - I don't remember anything. At all." Colby, Alan and Charlie had spent the whole night explaining the situation whenever Don had woken up until he finally had started to retain the information.

Megan nodded. "I assumed this much." Hesitating, she played with her hair. "Do you want to know something?"

"Colby explained everything." For a man who loved to be in control as much as Don did, this sentence alone had to hurt him.

"I know," Megan repeated. "But do you have questions?"

Don snorted. "How did it happen?"

"Well, you drank some drugged coffee that had been meant for Charlie. Additional you went to Charlie's car to get some papers for him. By the time you had reached the car, the drug had started to impair you heavily. It was easy to play the worried friends for Ron Silar and Horatio Cruz. They 'helped you' into the steam cellar of CalSci."

"Did they really took me for Charlie?"

"Until the end." The smile on her lips was a real one. "I think Ron Silar still believes this. Apparently, he had checked and you had proved to be Charlie, something about mental calculating?"

Don snorted. "That's possible. I know what to answer if asked a math question. It's just not the right answer." Shrugging, Don refused to elaborate his statement. "Can I borrow your phone?" Don suddenly asked instead.

"Sure. Why?"

"I need to get a hair cut."

Megan laughed out loud. "Why?"

"To make sure that I can't be mistaken for my brother ever again." He tilted his head and sighed. "But I guess, I'm glad that they got me and not Charlie."

That was a loaded statement, and Megan heard the emotion clearly. Time to change topics. "Serena, Ron and Horatio were a group of students who got disillusioned with their work on protesting for better climate protection. They wanted to be heard in a way it would change something."

"They wanted court proceedings and a mess?"

"No, they wanted to overcome their powerlessness." She said and carefully touched Don's shoulder. "The feeling of powerlessness is a dangerous emotion, especially if it leads to anger that overpowers rational thinking."

"Powerlessness," Don repeated and looked away.

"They won't leave prison for a long time." Megan could tell him about the long list of charges the ADA had thought of just on top of his head. But Don wasn't interested in this, like the three hadn't been interested in all the process their movement had already achieved. Things had happened outside their control, leaving them with the feeling of powerlessness.

As Megan stared at Don who still played with the sleeve of his shirt, she hoped that Don would find a better way to deal with powerlessness than Serena, Horatio and Ron had done because their way had been a way of destruction leading to more pain than healing.

And healing they would need.

END of Part I

* * *

_TBC in Part II_


	4. Part II - Aftermath 1

_Don walked along the CalSci steam tunnels. They seemed longer than he remembered them. A cold breeze made him shiver, but didn't help against the sticky air. Wasn't it supposed to be warm in the tunnels? Another shiver ran down his spine. Trudging on through the cold and damp air, his destination seemed out of reach in the semi-darkness. A destination he didn't even know yet. Straight and without any corners, the tunnel stretched endlessly._

_All of a sudden, a bright light blinded him. Tears sprung to his eyes, as he tried to blink through the mist in front of his eyes. After he had gotten used to the brightness, Don marched towards the lights. He finally had recognized them as spotlights. Spotlights like the FBI used to floodlight a crime scene. His steps faltered as he realized that his destination was a crime scene. Wearily, he continued in small steps._

_Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw shadowy people moving outside of the circle of light, probably some technicians. Don heard the clicking of their cameras. The smell of suffering and death wafted across and Don had to suppress his urge to gag._ _Still, he couldn't see any other persons. Nobody seemed to be present. Then the sounds and smells vanished as fast as they had come. Cautiously, he stepped into the circle of light. Only a single door was caught in the light. Without other options, Don went to it and grabbed the doorknob. Hopefully some of his team would be waiting behind the door, and he would finally get some answer._

_Pushing the door open, Don seemed to be the first to let light into the room. Nobody except the victim was in the room. Don's heart started to beat faster and the adrenaline sharpened his senses. He knew without a doubt that something was wrong. The victim had been to tied to one of the pipes and covered with a sheet. A half-empty bottle was tucked away between the body and the wall. Telling himself not to hesitate, Don grouched down and slowly pulled at the sheet. Slowly, he pulled down the sheet from the head revealing dark hair and a few bruises on a forehead. Then the sheet fell completely away, revealing the face. Dead eyes stared at Don. Dead eyes of a well-known face – his own. He jumped back and -_

\- with a scream on his lips, Don woke up. Scrambling out of the bed, he finished the motion he had started in his nightmare. His heart beat as if it wanted to burst his chest open, and he couldn't recover his breath, no matter how hard he tried.

Behind him, Robin shifted in the bed as she woke up. "Hey, hey, you're fine. Everything is all right," she said soothingly. She was awake, but her voice was still groggy and not as strong as usually. "Hey, it's all right."

The moonlight coming through the window provided enough light to dimly illuminate the room. Don leaned forward until his face touched the cool glass. Swallowing hard, he tried in vain to calm down his racing heart. Every night, he dreamed variations of the same dream. It never ended pleasantly. His mind was trying to make up for what he couldn't remember and coming up with increasingly terrifying situations.

Robin switched on her bedside lamp. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked. With every word she seemed to wake up more, and the guilt Don felt increased. He was stealing her her much-needed sleep.

Still breathing hard, he turned around and tried to force a smile on his face. "Go back to sleep. I'm fine."

Robin had sat up in their bed, leaning against the head of the bed. "You're not fine. Come back here." She patted on the sheets next to her. "But it was just a nightmare," she continued as he couldn't find words to answer her. "The doc said it was normal and could happen." That much the doc at the hospital had said. Including that it could take months to go away. He was already done with it after two weeks. Glancing down at his wrists, he could still see the shadows of the marks of the zip-ties. "I'm fine. You said as much yourself." Don tucked away his hands. He didn't want to see the marks anymore.

"You're alive, but not fine." Robin raised her voice slightly, finally allowing the frustration to bleed through her iron control. "You know the difference. Don't twist my words."

Don turned away and grabbed his work-out clothes. "I'm going for a run," he announced and left the room without looking back, but Robin scrambled after with. She was still throwing on her dressing gown, as Don pulled on his running shoes. "Don't," she pleaded with him.

"Why not?" Don asked and continued to tie his shoes.

"Did you look at the clock? It's two in the morning." Robin crossed her arms and shuffled over. She came near enough that Don could smell her shampoo, the same one she had used yesterday evening in the shower. But she still kept her distance. "It's not a good time to go for a run."

"I need to." Standing up, Don grabbed his keys.

"You can also do push-ups if you need the physical activity." Her voice changed from frustrated to desperate. "You don't need to go for a run. Please, just stay."

"Robin."

"Trust me. You either look like a mugging victim or a thug and it won't go down well if you go for a run now."

Don jerked at word victim. Most of his bruises had faded already. The swelling had gone down, but the missed sleep and nightmares that plagued him, still left him looking sick. The dark circles beneath his eyes, the stubbly beard he had yet to shave off, all of that gave him a rough look. He knew as much. Until now, Don had avoided the pain of shaving regularly with a swollen and painful face. Maybe today, he needed to shave again.

Robin approached him directly, finally feeling safe to do so. Forcing himself to stay still, he shivered beneath her soft touch. Her cool fingers felt like rods digging into his skin as she stroked along his upper arms. And yet, her touch was careful and soothing. Don leaned into it until he could rest his head on her shoulder, just for a moment. "All right." He gave in, not wanting to hurt her again. The marks on her arms, after she had tried to wake him from a nightmare were already bad enough. Not matter how easily Robin had forgiven him.

Slipping out of her tender embrace, Don pulled off his shoes. But instead of going back to bed, Don aimed for the kitchen. He went to the table and grabbed his laptop. "Maybe Charlie has something for me. He wanted to take a look at the new data."

Robin sighed. Crossing her arms again, she followed him and turned on the lights, something Don had intentionally skipped. "Megan is an excellent agent."

"I know." The laptop needed a long time to boot up. Don wished he could speed it up.

"And yet you still search for a conspiracy? For other members of the same group?" Robin had made it more than clear what she thought about his attempts to find instigators and supporters of the three students that had drugged and abducted him as she had refused to help him to get a court order for CalSci's locked student records.

"Do you really believe that three students can do this all alone?" Don challenged her.

"Yes, I do. I believe what an agent writes down in a report. And Megan did her investigation with great care and didn't leave any stone untouched. You cannot find something that's not there."

"Charlie has done more with less," Don replied, refusing to listen. Instead, he checked his emails, but his inbox was empty. Charlie hadn't pulled a rabbit out of his hat yet. So he brought up the interrogation tapes again, knowing well that he was bending the rules hard by having this interrogation tapes on his laptop. He wasn't even allowed to participate in the investigation. Pushing boundaries now was a dangerous move considering that he was still under investigation for the shooting of their serial rapist. But he needed to know. He needed to understand. No matter what the rules said.

"What do you think you're going to find on these tapes?" Robin fixed him with a challenging glare on her own. He had seen a few of them in the last days. " You have seen them already a thousand times over."

"Answers."

The anger seemed to leave Robin, and she let her arms drop down to her sides. Then she sighed and went back to the bedroom. "Last question," she said, looking over her shoulder while her left hand rested on the door frame. "Do you even know to what question you are looking for answers?"

Don looked up but didn't reply. He just wanted answers, simple as that.

* * *

Alan polished his golf clubs with a white cloth. Don had agreed to go golfing on the weekend with him. All right, agreeing to it was pushing it but at least he hadn't flat out said no like the last three times he had asked.

The ringing of the doorbell interrupted his preparations. "Coming," Alan called out, put down his golf club and hurried over to the door before Larry and Amita would be distracted. He had after all offered his house, or better Charlie's house, for them to work on Amita's thesis because of the silence it provided in contrast to the chaos that still reigned CalSci.

As he opened his door, Alan found Dr. Finch waiting for him with a smile on her face. "Millie, I didn't expect you," Alan greeted the head of the math department. A woman he had dated and maybe even had fallen a little for. But nothing of that feeling had survived her actions after three of her students had attacked his sons. She had hesitated.

"Alan, nice to see you. Is your phone broken? You didn't answer any of my calls. So, I thought I come over," Millie said and thrust past him.

Maybe he wasn't over her as well as he had thought as he hadn't had it in his heart to stop her from coming in. "I was busy. Busy with the house and with - " He didn't say Don because he hadn't been spent much time with his son. Don had tried to go on with his life as if nothing happened. Only Alan seemed to see the widening of the hairline cracks in Don's armor, scaring him. Charlie seemed to deal better with the situation, he continued his teaching and office hours on campus. Apart from that, he worked in the garage on different calculations for Don.

"Oh, I understand," Millie said while she wrung her hands. "But I thought maybe we could talk?"

For the first time, Alan saw how nervous Millie really was. Usually, she could be jittery but always on the grounds of ironclad confidence. Now, she really seemed unsure about herself and about the conversation. "It's a bad time right now. I -"

"Yo?" Don called out as he came in from the garage. Alan sighed. Apparently, his son had found a new way to avoid him while still being able to talk to Charlie by circling around the house and entering the garage directly.

Don stumbled to a halt as he saw Millie, but recovered fast and plastered a bright smile on his face. "Hi Dad, Millie. Did either of you have seen Charlie? I've got some new stuff for his analysis." In his hand he held a thick folder. Going by the dark shadows on his face, Don had spent the better part of the night going over of the tapes and files again, trying to pick up new clues and information Charlie could use in his private network analysis. On the bright side, Alan noted, he had shaved again.

"He's already at CalSci before he meets -" Alan said before he could stop himself. "He's at CalSci," Alan stated again, trying to fix his mistake. Charlie hadn't wanted to know about the planned visit. Wearily, Alan glanced to his son, trying to see if Don had noticed his slip-up, but Don was distracted because he had finally spotted Larry and Amita sitting on the sofa. Don greeted the professors with a nod before he stared back at Alan. "All right," he said with a frown on his face as if he could look right through Alan's attempt to cover up his mistake, "then I'll just drop them off there."

"Don? I'm about to go there. I could take it with me, so you don't have to ..." Amita trailed off. Don still went to CalSci as if nothing had happened, pretending to be fine but apparently even Amita had seen how much such a visit costed Don and offered him a way out. Maybe Alan wasn't the only one seeing the cracks.

Don narrowed his eyes, obviously fighting with himself. "If it's no trouble for you," he started; it was a preamble for giving in.

"No trouble at all," Amita assured him.

"Fine. Thanks!" Don went over to the professors and dropped the thick file on the table in front of Amita. "Say thanks to Charlie and I'll expect his call." Having finished for what he came in, Don turned and went to the front door. But to leave the house he had to pass Millie. Alan sent her a warning glare.

"Oh, Don, while you're here, can I speak to you for a minute?" she asked ignoring Alan's warning. "It's about Serena Dillions," she continued without pause, without giving Don the chance to say no. "What happened is terrible and on behalf of CalSci I want to apologize for what you had to endure on our campus." Don narrowed his eyes. "As you probably know," Millie continued without taking a breath, "all three students are prosecuted on the same charges. But I thought that you maybe could put in a good word -"

Alan's jaw dropped. For a moment, he couldn't believe his ears. How did she dare!

"Serena is not a bad person, she's misguided and made a big mistake, but she shouldn't receive the same sentence as Horatio and Ron," Millie went on. "In return, I offer to stop our lawyers from contesting every single of your requests and your agents can take a look at all files, lists and records they want to as long as their requests remain reasonable."

Don had frozen on the spot, his whole body tense like a tightly coiled spring.

"After all, she had recognized her mistake and tried to fix it. Without her help this wouldn't have turned out as well as it had," Millie continued as if she couldn't see Don's reaction "She doesn't deserve the same treatment as the two others and -"

Finally, Alan found his voice again. "Millie," he snarled.

"I know, I know," she said while she held up her hand to stop a protest and glanced to Alan, "what she did was wrong and I'm not making excuses for her or asking for much but Don," she faced Don again, "you also don't ask for innocuous files. That's highly sensitive data you want to take a look at. And I'm just saying that she doesn't deserve the same punishment."

Don balled his hands into fists and breathed deeply in and out as if he tried to keep in a volcano.

"If you could demonstrate that not all FBI agents are -" she broke off not using the word that was clearly on her tongue. "Well, it would certainly help to mend the pieces on campus. Currently, a lot of people are reminded of other times when protesting had led to police violence."

An icy silence settled on the room and like taking a deep breath in freezing air it hurt Alan deep inside. "Don," he mouthed and started to reach out with his hand but stopped himself short of touching his son.

Finally, Don seemed to have wrestled down whatever he had fought with. "Well, me and my thugs, we'll just get going and leave you happy-protesting people alone," he spat out and marched forward to the door, forcing Millie to clear the path.

"Donnie!"

"It's all right dad." He said without turning around. "I know, I know. We had this discussion like a three thousand times. I get it."

"Donnie!" Alan repeated desperately. This hadn't been his intention. He hadn't even thought about his own past and his involvement with protests on campus. This wasn't - the door banged shut behind Don.

Alan felt his anger rising and finding its target. He shot Millie a glare that was supposed to melt iron on the spot.

"What!" Millie asked. "Do you have any idea what has been going on the last two weeks on campus? The FBI is everywhere, want to take a look at everything and poke their head into businesses they have no right to. They search everywhere for drugs or meth labs as if our students were all drug dealer. It's a fair offer to get back some peace. In face of injustice you won't get peace. I tried to help Serena without asking Don. I have hired a lawyer for her and all of it. But the lawyer says that Don's injuries were too severe to even get anything less than twenty years. Twenty years. The best she can hope for is twenty years. This isn't fair and -"

"Millie," Alan interrupted her, staring at her as if he had never seen her before. "I think it's better if you go now."

"Alan, you of all the people should know that these kids are not bad people. Serena isn't bad person." Millie argued despite that she had to see just how serious Alan was.

"No, I do not know such a thing," Alan said. "I only know what it means to sit bedside your son's hospital bed and to see the damage your students did. You should go now."

Millie opened her mouth but then thought better about it. Nodding, she turned and left the room without another word. The resulting silence was almost worse than the icy atmosphere. Before it became unbearable, Larry sighed loudly.

"What?" Alan swirled around. "Do you agree with her?"

Larry strolled over to the window and looked out before he turned back to the room. "I am comfortable with my knowledge that if you're young you're going to do foolish things. Foolish things that have unintended consequences. But right now, I am more worried about me doing foolish things."

"What are you talking about Larry?" Amita asked. She was the only one still sitting, having chosen to stay silent in this fight.

"I have the strange urge to ball my hand into a fist and smash it into the faces of these three students. They took everything I stand for and made a mess of it. Instead of achieving victory for their side with rational arguments, arguments they have plenty to chose from, they destroyed the willingness of people to listen." He lowered his hand and shook it, trying to loosen his fingers balled into a fist. "But how can I be a teacher and reach my students if my hand is balled into a fist and not offered as a helping hand? I'm not young enough anymore to be allowed such foolish behavior."

Alan's fury started to fizzle out, and he sat down in his chair. Suddenly, he seemed to feel all his years in his bones and on his shoulders, dragging him down.

"What did Don mean?" Amita asked, breaking the awkward silence. "I mean with his comment about -"

"As a young man," Alan explained, "I was a dedicated member of Californians for Peace. I was engaged in the antiwar movement and -" he shrugged "I even got arrested at one of the sit-ins. Since these days, we, my wife and I, haven't been friends of the FBI. Too much had happened back then. Millie shares this same background."

"Oh. And Don?"

"Don was even present as I was arrested. I don't think he remembers. As far as I know he was first confronted with my file as he applied for a job at the FBI." Alan credited his wife's hard work and the stubborn refusal to lose that both Don and himself displayed, with keeping the family together even as Don joined the FBI.

"The ever conflict between the generations," Larry said.

"But this time there is no conflict. What these students did -"

"Ron Silar, Horatio Cruz and Serena Dillons," Amita added, repeating the names to not forget that real persons had done this, had drugged, beat up and abducted Don.

"What they did is inexcusable," Alan finished his sentence. "I have no sympathy for them at all. And if the FBI is coming after them and everybody who had helped them, then I consider this justice."

"I kind of understand them," Amita blurted out.

Alan gasped at her. Before he could say something, Amita hurriedly explained. "No not like that. It's just, we have some form of protest on the campus daily, and everybody agrees and draw diagrams and prepares data for campaigns. We have research groups and discussions. And yet nothing ever changes. If you go across the campus, you'll find garbage everywhere. We drink coffee out of disposable cups, and we don't do the things we know that we should do. I can understand why they wanted to do something different, something that made the world listen."

Crossing his arms, Alan fought down the anger. Amita had a right to voice her opinion even if he disagreed. "Well, all they achieved was that I hardened my heart. I'll never think about these issues again without thinking about Don."

"And Charlie," Amita added in a heavy voice. "The real target."

Alan shivered. "And Charlie," he agreed.

* * *

_TBC_


	5. Part II - Aftermath 2

Charlie stared at the yellow police tape in front of him. It closed off the entrance to the steam tunnels on CalSci. A crime scene on his campus, a crime scene where he had been the intended victim, a crime scene that made him shiver. What would have happened if he had drunk the coffee? What if Don hadn't come by just in time to protect him? All the bruises, all the hurt, all of it had been Charlie's fault. His father had made sure to drill into him the difference between responsibility and fault, but still Charlie wished he could tear down the tape and with it all the emotions bound to this place. He knew he wasn't responsible but he still felt guilty. A dark and dirty emotion he wished he could wipe away and replace with clean numbers on a black board, explaining everything.

"Charlie?"

Startled, Charlie jumped back, swirling around. Amita also took a step back. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you."

Taking a deep breath to slow down his racing heart, Charlie took a moment to calm down. "It's all right. I'm just a little jumpy."

"That's understandable."

"Why? Because some students wanted to abduct me?" Charlie joked, but the joke fell flat, failing to elicit a smile on Amita's face.

"Are you really sure you want to talk to the three students?" Amita asked and frowned. While she had supported his desire to understand all facets of what happened, he also could see her opposition to talking to the responsible students.

"Positive." He started to walk away from the entry to the steam tunnels, the police tapes and the memories. "I need to understand what they were thinking. It's counter-intuitive on every level. Ron Silar studied biomechanics and Horatio Cruz worked on his degree in chemistry. Both had grasped the concept of logic, and yet they did something so illogical."

"And Serena Dillons aimed for a master's degrees in political sociology," Amita said, widening her stride to keep up with Charlie. "So, do you want to know this for your cognitive emergence theory or for yourself."

Charlie stopped dead in his tracks, forcing the flow of people to move around him. "There's no difference between the two answers." His theory was his work and everything he learned he would use there even if he mostly just wanted to understand the incomprehensible.

Amita gave him a small grin. "Oh, there could be a difference in whether your interest is of professional or personal nature, but I guess for you there's no difference in both." Amita grabbed his elbow and pulled him off the pavement, so other could pass them without trouble. "All right, let me rephrase my question. On what do you work in your garage currently?"

Shrugging, Charlie looked down on the green grass. "Mostly, I analyze Don's data." After Don had thrown them out of the hospital room, Charlie had just been angry. Too angry to think clearly. But their father had taken the rejection even worse. Charlie had been prepared to accept the guilt as he had been the intended target, but he almost hadn't been able to bear the pain on Alan's face. Only his father's insistence that it was fine and that Don had the right to ask for privacy until the drugs had left his system, had prevented him from storming back into the room and making a scene. A fact, he had been immeasurable thankful for as just a few hours later, Don had called to apologize and to ask for his help. For his help! It had taken another two days until they finally could sit down and put their heads together, trying to figure out how many people had known about the plan and who could've helped. Still, headaches and raising tempers had made their talks difficult and prone to loud voices.

"Thought so," Amita said. "Don has brought new data for you to the house," Amita continued and pulled out a thick file from her bag. "Didn't you tell him that you were going to see Serena Dillons today?"

"Well," Charlie said, noting that the flow of people abated. "He didn't take it well that I wanted to talk to them. So, I thought it would be better to talk to him afterwards." It had sounded reasonably in the privacy of his thoughts, but spoken out loud it seemed childish.

"But he knows?" Amita pulled them both back on the walkway and still managed to stare at him intently.

"I didn't want to tell him at all until afterwards, but he -" Smiling ruefully, Charlie shrugged. "I needed help to make it happen and had asked Megan. But somehow he found out and confronted me with it. But I think most of his anger had been already dumped on Megan."

"Do you want me to come with you?" Amita asked.

"No!" Charlie almost shouted the word. "I mean no," he repeated in a normal voice. It had been a hard fight for Charlie to get the permission to talk to the three students. There had been a lot of red tape and juridical issues but in the end somehow he had been allowed, but only if they would explicitly agree to a meeting. He didn't want to jeopardize it by bringing Amita with him. And maybe, just maybe he wanted to keep her away from danger.

"You still want to protect me," Amita concluded on her own.

"It's bad enough already that Don was mistaken for me. I couldn't take if you're hurt," Charlie said. Amita wouldn't be able to pretend to be as fine as Don did. But maybe this would be easier to bear than Don's attempts to act as if nothing had happened.

"Charlie, you do know that Don is taking this hard, do you?"

Charlie glanced to the parking lot and nodded. He knew it, had seen it. The way Don walked across campus, the way he entered Charlie's office and even drank coffee on campus, it all was supposed to show that he was fine. But Charlie had learned to look deeper, and so had Amita. They both had seen the way he never let go of his coffee and didn't accept anything offered to him, no sugar, no milk, no food. Nothing. Normal people saw just what they were supposed to see - a strong and untouchable FBI agent. But Charlie had seen more. He had seen the furtive glances around, the way Don assured himself that he was wearing a bulletproof vest, the way he never relaxed. Charlie looked up to his girlfriend and found the same knowledge reflected in her eyes.

Don wasn't fine. Not by a long shot.

Before they could continue their conversation, David arrived and waved Charlie over. It was time. If he could just figure out what the Serena and her friends had been thinking, then maybe, just maybe he could understand it; and if he could understand it then he would know what to do.

* * *

Megan watched the elevator. Since Larry had called her and reported what had happened between Dr. Mildred Finch and Don, she had been waiting for Don to arrive at the office. He could have driven the distance three times already and still hadn't shown up. David had left to accompany Charlie's visit to Serena Dillons, but Megan was still waiting.

Lowering her head, Megan tried to get her work done, while also trying not to think too much about Don. But the worry in her gut stole her focus. For days Don had run after his idea that there was a conspiracy and not just luck and chance, running straight toward the dangerous pit of desperation. Don was wearing himself down, trying to figure out the why, while Megan had been forced to a front row seat, seeing the crash coming but not knowing how to head it off.

Another ding of the elevator, and Megan raised her head again. Finally, this time the elevator car contained Don. She sighed in relief and looked away as Don left the elevator before he could notice her monitoring. But Don didn't even look up, busy fidgeting with his access card.

"Everything all right?" she asked, as he had reached their cubicle and finally finished clipping the card to his belt.

"What?" Looking up, he seemed to be far away. "Yes, fine. Sorry, I'm late. Colby texted me. Did I miss anything?" He looked shortly to her before his focus returned to his desk, and he started to search for something.

Megan answered with a patient smile. "No, nothing important." She paused, waiting for him to say something. But she should have known that Don would keep his silence. "Larry told me about the run-in with Millie," she finally offered.

Dropping the files in his hands on his desk with a loud bang, Don turned towards her. "Does the whole world know about it?" he snarled loud enough that several agents looked their way. Biting his lips, Don sat down. In a lower voice, he continued, "Who called you?"

Megan frowned. "Larry. I hope you don't actually think about Millie's words. She had no right to approach you, you know that."

"I know," Don snapped back and went back to his searching. "Besides, my dad had already called Robin who also offered to take back everything she had said and getting me every warrant I could possible want if I don't even think about putting in a good word for the girl." Don snorted. "As if anything I could say, would change anything, even if I'd wanted."

Relieved Megan leaned back in her chair. "I'm glad to hear that," she said while thinking, 'Good for Robin." Robin at least knew her priorities, and that priority was protecting Don, even if she had to ignore her professional opinion. A professional opinion Megan shared. Through Larry, Megan knew how strained the last weeks on CalSci had been. And the backslash was just gaining strength and momentum. For a moment, Megan had actually been worried that Don's absence was connected to Millie's proposal. "So, where have you been?"

Out of the corner of his eyes, Don stared at Megan with narrowed eyes.

"Hey!" she said. "I'm just a little worried. It's not like the last days have been easy for you or your family."

For a long moment, Don remained silent and just stared at her, then he answered, "I went to the batting cages. Happy now?"

"If it helped, I'm happy," Megan said with a smile. Going to the betting cages may have not been her preferred option but it was a good choice. "I guess you don't want to talk about Millie?"

This time, Don didn't even bother to turn around, letting his silence and tense shoulder being his answer, still searching something on his desk. Shrugging, Megan went back to her own work. She had just found where she had left off, as she was interrupted. "Megan? Where's the profile on Dillons, Cruz and Silar and their possible connections to a group?"

She sighed and rolled over to Don with her chair. "In their files."

Don frowned. "I asked for a new one."

"Don, the conspiracy you are looking for doesn't exist." Megan leveled her voice to a soothing tone. The faster Don would find a way to deal with what happened and not trying to find answers that didn't exist, the faster he could heal. "It was three students working together, having luck and a plan. Nothing more."

"They needed to have help," Don insisted.

Megan hesitated, rubbing at her forehead before she glanced to him. "Don, did you talk to Bradford, yet?"

Don laughed out loud but there was no humor in his voice and expression. "Is this the answer to everything? I have questions and your answer is a shrink?"

"No."

"Then what?" he growled, rapidly losing his patience, something he often did since returning to desk duty.

With no answer, she had no idea, if Don had been to the mandatory visit yet. Megan had to assume that he either hadn't been there or it hadn't helped him. Either way, as she was the one who could see the big crash Don was headed to, it was her responsibility to act. So, Megan tried again. "Don," she started, "the truth is that there were only three students, who had a plan - grabbing a well-like professor, calling in a press conference, having enough press present and appear out of the blue on campus, presenting their ideas and demands directly to the press, knowing to get at least a week of coverage out of such a stunt. We would have cleared the campus but not the steam tunnels, not in the given time frame. It would have been a nightmare to make the arrest, and they would have gotten their press coverage in a way nothing else would have worked."

Don worked his jaw. Megan could see how he tried to separate words and thoughts from emotions and angry reactions. "They claimed in interrogation," Don said, "that they were protesting for more climate protection. To take it more seriously. Then a classic go famous or die trying doesn't make sense. If this was their plan, the result doesn't fit the aim. There has to be somebody else behind it. Somebody with a different objective, somebody who used them."

"You're right."

"What?"

"You're right," Megan repeated with a straight face. She had learned to debate from scratch. Agreeing with somebody who expected opposition was a well-known trick to take the wind out of someone's sails. "There is somebody else behind it. Or better something. It's an emotion and it's called fear. They fear the climate change. They fear the future."

"Really?" Don snarled. "They fear something that may or may not happen, now or in fifty years? And aren't we working on it?"

Megan tried to hide her sigh. Her aim was to help Don and not to antagonize him. If he could understand the student's emotions than maybe he would be able to categorize the students' actions better and find a way to let go. "Emotions are per se not rational. It doesn't matter if you think the climate change is something to fear or not. The important thing it that they fear it. You should know that."

"Megan," Don growled, trying to stop her. He stood up, apparently hopying to end this discussion.

But Megan was on a run. "Fear is not rational. If a police officer shots all his twenty bullets into a single man, then this isn't rational. Rational thinking would make you stop after five."

"That's not the same!"

"But in a way it is - they fear honest to goodness the climate change. And want to stop it."

"By kidnapping Charlie?" Don stopped to fight down his anger and allowed his face and voice to show his fury.

Megan fought down her passionate stance and settle back down. With more patience, she tried again. "Fear is not rational," Megan repeated. "Don't try to find a logic in their action. They acted out of panic, out of emotions. They haven't sat down to consider the consequences of their actions. Please, Don, as long as you try to understand their actions with your mind you'll always be angry. But if you try to accept that they acted out of fear, ..." Megan left the sentence unfinished, hoping Don would come to his own conclusion. She could just tell him what she saw, but to deal with it, he had to find his own way.

Don also sat down. Slowly, he shook his head. "They knew how to create fear, they knew how to follow a plan. You cannot compare a shooting that's over in a few seconds while you fear for your life with their careful preparations and planning."

Megan eyed Don, her frown deepening. Suddenly, she heard what Don wasn't saying. Don wasn't only stuck on what had happened, but more so on what could have happened if they hadn't mistaken Don for Charlie. She tilted her head and eyed Don. "Would you have called in a press conference, if they had gotten Charlie?"

Don exhaled and leaned back in his chair. Biting on his lower lip, he refused to answer.

"You would have considered it," Megan concluded. "Because fear is a powerful motivator."

Stroking along his chin, Don worked to relax his tense jaw. "I still need the report."

Sighing, Megan pushed her chair away. "You're the boss, even if you actually have no say in that matter. I'll write you one. But it won't say anything else I haven't already told you." She knew why she bothered but that didn't ease the pain of watching Don going down a dark path.

"Yeah, well, thanks anyway."

* * *

"Ready?" David asked while he locked his car.

"No," Charlie replied truthfully. "But I need to do this for my own and for Don's sake."

David gave him an unreadable look. "I'm going in with you, all right?" Charlie nodded, knowing that David was coming with him as a protector. Normally, Charlie would reject the notion, but this time, as he looked up the towering building surrounded by locked fences, he appreciated it.

Charlie shivered in the sun as he waited for the gate to open up all the way. It was a natural response to the rattling of the gates and sound of alarms. A visit in a holding facility was nothing for the fainthearted. David calmly introduced them before they were handed a form to fill out. The whole process seemed complicated and obscure, as Charlie just wanted to talk to the woman, the student who had wanted to abduct him. Nothing more.

Finally, Charlie was sitting in a small interrogation room waiting for Serena to be brought to him. Rubbing his sweaty palms together, he again was reassured by the smile on David's lips.

Whatever he had expected, the truth still managed to surprise him. Prison hadn't been kind to Serena Dillons. Nothing had remained of the shyly smiling girl on the photo he had pinned to his black board in his network analysis. Charlie only saw a woman with puffy and red eyes from crying that seemed to vanished between the two burly guards. For a moment, he felt pity, but then he remembered Don in the hospital and all the anger returned with a vengeance.

Serena was the first to break the awkward silence. "I'm so sorry. So sorry, Professor Eppes." She sniffled. "How is your brother?"

"Don, he, he is fine," Charlie answered, keeping his hands pressed against his thighs to prevent himself from balling them into fists.

"I promise, I only agreed to help Horatio and Ron because they had promised that they wouldn't hurt you."

"And would you have agreed if you had known it was my brother?" Charlie shot back.

Serena looked down on, staring at the handcuffs that locked her hands to the belt around her waist. "That's different," she finally offered.

Charlie shook his head. "No, it's not."

Flashing her eyes, Serena's head whip back up. "I wanted to help and save us. Everyday hundreds of people die of hunger because there's a drought. And it will only get worse. We don't have time to play nice anymore, we need results now and everybody who doesn't help ..." She suddenly stopped and glanced to David and the guards in the room.

"Is dispensable?" Charlie filled in the silence, forcing the hurtful words past his lips.

"I'm sorry. Really sorry, I didn't think Ron would get so angry. But as you, I mean your brother refused to drink the drugged water, something just snapped and -" The rest of her words were lost as a crying fit shock her small body.

Helplessly, Charlie glanced to David. It didn't seem fair to feel so conflicted. She had willingly participate in the plan, and no matter how much she believed it, Charlie knew that he wouldn't have suffered a better fate. But despite that, he still was touched by her tears. Fighting the urge to move, Charlie swallowed hard. No touching had been one of the conditions for the visit.

"I haven't said thank you yet for calling for help," he said as she had calmed down a little.

Serena nodded and snuffled. "Ron and Horatio are going to be so angry."

"You won't have to worry about them for a long time." Maybe Charlie wanted to console her, maybe he wanted to make it clear what her sentence would look like, either way the words seemed to stop the flow of tears.

"But what do I do now?" Serena asked and looked at Charlie. Suddenly, Charlie was reminded of the young students from his freshmen classes, eager students wanting to learn and hanging on his every word, not wanting to miss one twist of his tale. They knew he had the solution and were eager to hear it from his lips. Serena stared at him like that, expecting him to have an answer he didn't have.

"What would you have done afterwards, if it had worked?"

She shrugged. "I just wanted to get the message out. We need to do something right now, or we ..." she trailed off. Slowly, an expression of desperation appeared on her face. She bit down hard on her lower lip.

"You didn't have a plan for afterward?"

Slowly, Serena shook her head. Her lips started to tremble again and a new batch of tears streamed down her face.

Charlie stared at her, trapped between empathy as a young life had been thrown away so carelessly and being horrified at the sheer irrationality in all of it. There never had been a real plan, never a big picture, just a small act of desperation that could have costed him his brother.

* * *

_TBC_


	6. Part II - Aftermath 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!

Don walked along the CalSci steam tunnels. They seemed far longer than he remembered them. The hot and damp air stole his breath but Don trudged on. He had a job to do and so he continued through the small tunnels. Somehow, they became smaller the longer he walked.

Suddenly, he heard voices. At first they sounded small and tiny. Tilting his head, he tried to place them. But they seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Don couldn't understand what they were saying. With part dread and part curiosity, he marched on.

The air became so sticky, Don had to pause to take a deep breath. Sweat was running down his back and his face seemed to glow from the heat.

Suddenly, the distant voices sharped and Don could clearly understand them. The contrast was so startling, Don stumbled and had to lean against the wall.

"He wanted to be the boss, but couldn't even free himself."

"Yeah, did you see that? Two small students kidnapped him."

"How could he drink drugged coffee? Seriously, a real agent would have tasted the drug."

"Of course. But maybe Agent Eppes isn't a real agent. Just a make-believe one."

Don heard the voices and he listened to the words. In the dark tunnel he couldn't see any faces, but he also didn't want to see them. Maybe it wasn't words but knives that were rammed into his body. It certainly felt like that and Don started to pant and -

Gasping for air, Don snapped awake, jumping out of the bed. His breaths came fast as if he had run a marathon. Unable to stand the darkness, Don switched on every light he could fine but it was still too dark. For days, he had wished that Robin would go home and leave him alone but now that he was alone he wished her back. At least her presence would have helped to calm down his racing heart.

His clothes clung to his skin and reminded him of the heat in the tunnels. Without further thoughts, he stalked into the bathroom, ripped off his clothes and threw them on the floor before he went into the shower. Adjusting the water to as cold as he could take, Don let the coldness wash away the memories and words of his dreams. As he watched the water vanishing in the drain, he wished he could follow the water drops.

No matter the hour, Don would go running. He needed to.

* * *

Alan took a deep breath and hesitated shortly but then raised his hand to rap his knuckles against Millie's door. For days, he had agonized over it, but a visit in her office at CalSci seemed like a good place to start, on neutral ground.

"Come in."

With no way back now, Alan pushed the door open and entered. He held up a small bag. "Peace offerings." The smell from the bag wafted through the room, revealing its delicious contents.

"Alan?" Millie leaped up from her chair, her work on her laptop forgotten. Pulling down her reading glasses, she hurried over to Alan. "I'm so glad you're here and I'm so sorry for what I did. I should have never said anything. It's my job to deal with the federal government and Don's agents are just doing their job." She stood up. "I mean this time they are really working overtime and I haven't counted how often I heard the threat about being cut off from federal funding in the last weeks, but I knew that when I took the job. It was more peaceful in the Antarctica. Maybe I should have stayed," she rambled on. "Oh, I'm sorry, I always talk too much if I'm nervous."

Alan dared a tentative smile and put down the bag. "One, Millie, I am not here on behalf of Don. You have to talk to him yourself. But I didn't want to continue ignoring your messages anymore. So, I brought peace offerings."

"But you don't need to bring peace offerings. I'm the one who needs to apologize and ..." Millie trailed off. Instead of continuing, she opened the bag and pulled out a cookie box. She grabbed one and took a small bite. "Oh, these are delicious. Where did you buy them?" Alan opened his mouth to explain as Millie cut in again. "Oh, right we were talking about peace offerings and that you don't need one."

Alan smirked. No surprise, that Amita and Charlie found it sometimes difficult to deal with her. "Larry said that young people are allowed to act foolish but with age should come wisdom, so I took a step back and evaluated my own reaction."

Millie's chewing slowed down.

"And I realized that I'm not only worried about my boys and furious about what happened but that I'm also angry," Alan paused, "angry at you."

Millie swallowed hard. "Alan, I -"

Holding up his hand, Alan tried to finish his little speech. "I know that I should be more furious with the three, this Silar, Cruz and Dillons, because they hurt my boy. But I'm used to the knowledge that there are bad people out there who hurt Don." He paused. Getting used to the hurt and pain and always expecting a visit from mournful agents was wrong on many levels. Yet, Alan had to acknowledge that this had happened. And now he also had to start to get used to this thought in regard to Charlie. At least Charlie should have been safe on campus. He should have been safe! Alan had to fight for his composure before he raised his head and stared at Millie who watched him knowingly. "But that you had known somebody took my boy, no matter if it had been Don or Charlie and didn't do something right away, made me more angry than what the students had done. Because you are my friend, somebody I thought I knew." Alan wrung his hands. "And your request didn't help."

"I'm really sorry," Millie pushed the words in.

"I got that, you sent enough messages, cards and flowers. My house had never been so bright and full of flowers," Alan said allowing a little humor in his voice. "But I needed to make a decision, whether I could forgive you. To forgive that you hesitated to name a name, to give up one of the people who had kidnapped my son -"

"Alan," Millie interrupted him after all. "If I had known that it was so serious, I would have acted right away, I just thought that maybe Charlie had his own opinion about what he wanted to do and I didn't want to do something that I couldn't take back before talking to ..." She trailed off. "Oh shoot, I was afraid that it was exactly what it seemed to be and I didn't know what to do. So," Millie said and swallowed hard, "Can you forgive me?"

Alan hesitated. It still seemed too fresh, but he had reached a decision. Silently, he pointed to the table with the cookie box. "Peace offerings. Somebody has to start to work on the peace, it may as well be us." Or like Larry had said - with age should come wisdom and Alan didn't want to spend the rest of his life, the few years he had left, being angry.

Millie offered him a bright and relieved smile. Then she took another cookie. "I was truly shocked," she said with a full mouth. "I mean, we have so many things here. Workshops, discussion, everybody is allowed to bring themselves in and this shouldn't be a place to chose and end up using violence."

"Violence always happens, if you don't find an outlet for your anger."

"But we offer our students a lot. We offer them the world. The network they can build here, the knowledge - it is enough to change the world."

"They are young. While you're young, time has a different meaning. There's only the present. And right now, they can't change the world. Now, the world continues on its way without listening to them."

"I have yet to make somebody listen," Millie concluded. "I mean, I can force somebody to hear my words, but to listen required a certain open-mindedness to allow an exchange of arguments".

Alan also grabbed a cookie because they really were delicious. Maybe tasty food really helped to have a conversation like that. He should try it more often.

"I guess, I also never really listened. I thought I was prepared for everything. But do you know what? This stops now. I'm going to listen, to really listen. Lately, I've failed often enough. I failed Serena and I failed the Eppes men. I have a lot to make for."

"And?" Alan asked wearily.

"I'm starting with you. Tell me, how are you really? How is Charlie and how is Don? No the g-man," Millie clarified, "but your son."

"Well, both of my sons are hurting and angry and trying to find peace that seems to be so elusive. And I don't know how to help them. Oh, and my past is catching up with me. And you?"

"Three of my students turned out to be ecoterrorists, if I were to believe the FBI. They wanted to abduct one of my professors and mocked with their actions everything this university is standing for. And I don't know how to undo the damage."

Both grabbed a cookie and knocked it slightly against the other as if they would click glasses. "Cheers!"

"Cheers!"

Sometimes there was no solution, only shared pain.

* * *

"Hey Don, do you have a minute?" David asked.

Don glanced up from the report he was reading. Megan had made good on her threat and just wrote the same thing again. Still, there had to be a connection, a group behind the three. There simply had to be one. In front of his desk, David waited with a file in his hand. "Yeah, sure." Don focused on his agent.

"So I'm working on the fraud thing," David said and indicated with his chin to a file on Don's desk. Searching through his memories, Don remembered the case distantly. Usually, this case wouldn't have ended up on his desk, but there had been two suspicious death in connection to the fraud and suddenly it was a job for the violent crime division. "I traced back the origin of the money to a company with four employees. Only one of them is needed to sign the papers to free the money," David explained. "What would you advise?"

Grabbing the offered file with the current documents, Don paged through the data. Then he snapped the file shut again and handed it back to David. "The same thing you would do. Get all four in and see who breaks first." Don paused. "And I don't need you to come to me with every little thing, just so I may feel useful."

"Well," David accepted the file back. "I asked because I needed your advice. Why else do you think I would come to you? Because it's a given fact that you are needed."

Don snorted and shook his head. "I got kidnapped by some punks. Not my best day."

"You were drugged," David replied. "That's different."

Refocusing on his own work and Megan's file, Don looked away. "Well, then I got kidnapped and drugged by some punks. Not better," he mumbled.

David exhaled loudly. "Would you say any of this to a victim of GHB?"

"Of course not!" Don shot back.

"Would you say any of this if the victim of GHB was a federal agent?" David asked, crossing his arms. "Should she have been better watching her drink? Wearing different clothes? Going to different places?"

"No."

"Then why don't you exercise some leniency for yourself?" David raised his eyebrows, challenging him. "I know what I do with my case because I learned that from you. You're a good agent."

Don leaned back in his chair, working his jaw. There were several answers on top of his tongue, yet none of them seemed reasonable in broad daylight.

David had mercy and continued without forcing Don to answer. "I heard that you have taken a liking to midnight runs."

Shifting in his seat, Don narrowed his eyes. That was far too fast for the rumor mill.

"One of the officers I know from the Lost Kids Neighborhood Project we both support called me after he has seen you," David explained. The explanation sounded so innocent and yet Don could hear the worry in David's words. Rolling his eyes, Don refused to provide an answer and turned back to his desk, intending to get some work done. That seemed a better prospect than continuing this conversation with David.

Leaning forward, David lowered his voice and said, "Tell you what, next time you want to go for a run, give me a call, and we both go, no matter the hour and -"

"Don?" Colby's timely arrival saved Don from having to acknowledge David's offer, and he gratefully focused on the interruption. "Finally got the list Charlie highlighted," Colby reported. "Horatio Cruz' old classmates from high-school? There's one name, James Edwards, you need to take a look at." Colby held out the still warm paper, just having been printed, and Don grabbed it. At least Colby was willing to take a second look. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw David sighing, but chose to ignore it. This list was far more important right now.

* * *

He was almost getting used to it - the locks, the sounds, the stern glares of the guards. But this time everything seemed harsher.

"Hey, professor," Horatio Cruz said through the receiver. "Thanks for coming."

The booth and the clothes were far too small for the young man and Charlie stared at him for a long moment before he saw David's nod to pick up the phone receiver on his side. With a trembling hand, Charlie reminded himself that he was safe behind the glass. "Horatio," he said in greeting. "I'm surprised you agreed to talk to me."

"Yeah, well it didn't work out like it was supposed to do. So, it was the least I could do." Horatio looked down, playing with the band around his wrist that had changed his life from being free to being a number.

"Because you had grabbed my brother and not me?"

"No," Horatio said, raising his head and meeting Charlie's eyes. "It was never supposed to be so much drug in the coffee. I never wanted to kill anybody, just ..." Horatio's gaze went back down.

Charlie waited but Horatio kept his silence. Ignoring the way his heart throbbed in his chest, Charlie tried to remember his line of thought, the reason he had wanted these visits so badly. He had wanted, no needed, to understand why three young and bright students had done something so irrational and senseless. He didn't even need to read the papers or watch the TV shows, to know that the public opinion fell neatly along the battle lines with just a few exceptions. But change, they had not achieved. "What would you have done if you had grabbed me?"

"It's the past now," Horatio mumbled his reply. "I can't change it." Raising his head, he offered Charlie a small smile. "But I'm glad you're fine."

"What about my brother?"

"I guess, I'm glad too, that he's alive." Horatio gave him a one-sided shrug. "Like I said, I didn't want to kill anybody."

"You didn't want to kill anybody but hurting my brother was all right?"

"Listen, it's not like that had been the plan, but somehow we had to make ourselves heard." Finally, the dull and lifeless voice changed and Horatio's expression started to show his zeal for his ideas.

"So, you're fine with how it went down?" Charlie asked surprised.

"Yes! Everybody is arguing about our motive and what we wanted to achieve. We have reached more as if our plan had worked."

Charlie shook his head, suddenly feeling old. He was used to feeling young, too young around a lot of older and wiser people. But now he felt really old in face of the enthusiasm that wasn't grounded in reality. "You did yourself and your idea a great disservice, you know that?"

"Because the FBI can't take some bad press?" Horatio snarled back with a sneer.

"No," Charlie replied, "because you demonstrated something important."

"Yeah, and what?"

Tilting his head, Charlie wished to be able to make him see but also knowing he could not change another person's mind. "Is saving the planet worth your humanity? For who do you want to save it? What happens to empathy, to freedom and to our ideal of equality in the world you want to create?"

Horatio pressed his lips together, keeping the words in, but the angry reply was already reflected on his face and in his narrowed eyes.

"What world do you want to live in? One where everybody who doesn't agree with you is killed? Beaten? Or drugged?"

"We can't keep on talking. We need to do something now," Horatio insisted.

"I know the numbers, I know the science behind it. I even helped to create the necessary models. You don't need to convince me how important climate protection is," Charlie said. "But living is more than breathing clean air, sheltering from the elements and eating organic food. It's love, it's math, it's humanity."

"We want that, too!"

"Really? What you did, what you want is to protect the climate regardless of the cost to humaneness." As Horatio gaped at him, suddenly Charlie knew what had been missing in his theory up until now - the ability of the human mind to overwrite basics instincts with higher ideals. He really needed to grab a notepad and write this down.

Somewhere in the human brain, there had to be a process that could change priority, a process that could ignore survival instincts. No matter how well fear and anger could overrule rational thoughts, rational thoughts could also win against fear and anger. There had to be a way to evince this into an expression usable by both biologist and mathematicians.

While Horatio tried to win back the prevalence over the conversation, Charlie was already immersed in his thoughts.

* * *

Alan watched Don picking at his food. He seemed far away no matter that he was sitting at Alan's table. It couldn't be the food, Alan had made sure to only use the most delicious items in cooking one of Don's favorite meals. He tried desperately to think of something to say. Before he could come up with neutral topic, Don pushed away his plate. "You haven't invited me to lunch just so you can watch me eat. So, what's up?"

Jerking at the hard tone, Alan held onto his temper. No need to lose the conversation right at the beginning. "Firstly, yes, I only invited you for lunch because I wanted to see you eat something. It's not like you come over anymore like you used to do."

"I'm busy, Dad," Don interrupted.

"Of course, you are," Alan agreed with a smile. "I can see Charlie's network analysis growing by day and somebody has to dig up all the information."

Don narrowed his eyes at him. "You also think, I'm wasting my time."

Alan took a deep breath. "Not wasting your time. Time spent trying to figure out something is never wasted. But I'm worried about the direction of your journey."

A dark smirked graced Don's features. "How's Millie?" Don asked, suddenly changing the topic.

"She's fine."

"So, you're talking again to each other?"

Too late, Alan recognized the trap he had walked right into. Crossing his arms, Alan knew there was no way but through it. "Yes, that's what adults do if they don't agree on something. They talk to each other." Don rolled his eyes and Alan had to chuckle as he realized that he had used his parent voice. "Donnie, I hope you do not truly think that I would choose any protest over you."

For a long moment, Don tapped with his fingers a melody on the table. A melody only he knew.

"Donnie," Alan started again, afraid that his son would really believe that.

"No," Don interrupted. "No, I do not believe that. But I did wonder where you would draw the line." He looked right at him. "How far are you willing to go for your idea and ideals? What would you have done if somebody had run a similar plan by you back then in the sixties?"

Alan had always known that Don excelled in the role of investigator. But sometimes he wished that he would be spared from Don's hard questions. "The truth is, Donnie, I don't know what I would have done. I hope I would have said no, but I cannot pretend to have known back then what I do know now."

"And what do you know now?"

"Times are changing whether we want or not."

"Meaning?" Don asked while he picked up his fork again.

"In ten or twenty years the opinions of today's youth will be a major driving force. By then they'll have reached the manager positions that enables them to make far-reaching decision." Alan took a deep breath. "You know, back then I thought I was leaving the antiwar movement to take care of my family but in reality I never left. I just changed the way I expressed my opinions, starting by the way I did my job, the way I raised my sons and the way I voted. Even in the way I treated my neighbors, I let myself be guided by my ideals."

Don nodded. Walking the high morale ground versus the necessity to deal with the reality had been a highly discussed topic in Don's youth. He probably really remembered most of Alan's opinions on these matters. He had repeated them often enough.

"I guess I changed the world more by living by my principals than by protesting for them. You, both of my sons, are the reason I can say I'm proud of what I have done."

"I joined the FBI," Don pointed out.

"Yes, you did," Alan grumbled. "And I'm still trying to figure out what I did wrong there but your choice also taught me an important lesson."

"Yeah, which one?"

"To let go, to be tolerant towards other choices, to bear the equality of different opinions."

Don snorted. "Well, at least I'm not threatened to be used in a published paper by your insights."

Alan smirked. "Maybe I switch classes just to write a paper on you?" Alan joked before he turned serious again. "I'm proud of you that you don't blame your brother but that you two work together to make sense of it."

Don looked down, giving up on eating and leaving a half-full plate. "Yeah, well, that's not working out so great at the moment. I only got one name out of a lot of work. Maybe Megan's right, and I'm really chasing ghosts."

Reaching out with his hand to touch Don's hand resting on top of the table, Alan tried to offer some comfort. "It's okay if you can't make sense of it. I'm older and I have seen far more, and I'm still struggling with all of it."

"But you seem at peace. As if you wouldn't have almost lost Charlie -"

"Don!" He sounded angrier that he wanted, pulling his hand back. "For me there's no difference if I almost lost you or Charlie. Don't ever doubt this!"

Don nodded. "If they had grabbed Charlie ..." he trailed off, but the pain was etched on Don's face. "I have at least my work to keep me occupied."

"And your brother has his math. You're both resilient." Alan reached out again, but this time Don pulled his hand back, pushed the chair back and climbed to his feet. "I need to go back to the office. Thanks for lunch." He hesitated, before he looked Alan in the eyes. "I still just want to track down everybody who thinks like them and lock them up, so nobody ever does anything like this again. I want somebody to pay for all the pain. For taking away Charlie's innocence, for destroying the peace we had on campus. I want to -" Don broke off, his hands balled into fists.

"Donnie," Alan started unsure how to continue and started to raise.

"Never mind. Thanks for the ..." Don shrugged, waved goodbye and walked out, closing the door behind him and leaving his sentence unfinished.

* * *

_TBC_


	7. Part II - Aftermath 4

**The Aftermath 4/5**

* * *

_Don walked along the CalSci steam tunnels. They seemed longer than he remembered them. Fog had filled up the tunnels and Don couldn't see his hand in front of his eyes. Slowly, he moved along the wall. The fog invaded his lungs, squeezing out the air he needed to breath._

_Shivering, Don marched on. Somewhere in the distance, he could see a light. Moving forward, Don listened for any voice or movements, but he was all alone._

_Finally, the fog lifted and Don could see a crime scene in front of him. The light was a spotlight used to illuminate the surrounding area. Spotting Megan, Don ambled over to her. Nobody seemed in too much of a hurry. Whatever had happened here seemed to have left them all silent._

_A faceless agent stepped in front of him, holding his hand up, but Don just walked through him. He could see Megan's lips moving, but he couldn't hear any voices. She stood in front of the victim but before he could order her away, she vanished into the fog that had caught up to him._

_Crouching down, Don saw the dead body of a young man, tied to a pipe. His head was tilted back and his mouth opened in a silent stream. He wanted to ask the cause of death as Don detected a small detail. The dark and wet hairs started to curl where they were longer. He knew a guy with dark curly hair. Fighting against the nausea, he tilted the victims head forward, so he could look at the face - the face of his little brother. Charlie!_

Don awoke with a start. Fighting against the sheets that trapped him in bed, he scrambled out of the bed. His heart thumped fast. Shaking all over, Don had to force himself to take deep breaths. He closed his eyes, but there the dead eyes of his brother were waiting for him, and he snapped them open again.

Robin was still sleeping. Somehow, he had been silent enough, or maybe she was tired enough. On tiptoes, Don left the bedroom. After changing clothes, he put on his running shoes. He glanced back to bedroom almost as if he expected to see Robin standing there, staring at him in disappointment. But there was nobody. Don grabbed his cell and left the apartment to go running.

A city never truly slept but still most people were sleeping. Sleeping again without dreaming seemed like a distant memory. Don easily found his rhythm for his feet and his breath. Step by step, the images from his dream vanished.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Don saw another runner joining him. "Thanks for calling," David said between two breaths.

"Robin worries too much," Don replied before he returned his focus on the rhythm of his steps.

"So does your dad."

Don acknowledged David's statement with a slight nod. But the reminder costed him his focus and Don started to speed up, running faster and faster. With a sprint, David reached him again. Touching Don's shoulder, David managed to slow Don down. "You need to forgive."

Don lost his rhythm, stumbled and then stopped abruptly.

Breathing hard, David also came to a halt. "After Colby was revealed to be a double agent, I was just angry. You know that. Not even the knowledge that Colby actually was a triple agent could appease my anger." Starting with stretching, David waited a few moments before he continued. "You offered me some advice back then - to let go."

"That's different. Colby -"

"Yes, it's different but anger won't simply go away, you know that Don," David said. "You can't outrun your anger. You can't outrun your powerlessness. Yes, you can run until you don't have the energy to be angry anymore but you can not truly outrun your anger."

Don crossed his arms, ignoring the knowledge that he shouldn't go from running to standing still. "Forgive? Who?"

"For starter, how about yourself?" David turned and started to run again.

What David had done was actually Don's preferred method, saying what he wanted to say and then vanishing. Don could either let David run away or following him. In the end, his legs started to move before he had reached a conscious decision.

"And then?" Don asked after he had caught up with David, and they both had considerably slowed down again.

"You forgive Serena Dillons, Horatio Cruz and Ron Silar."

"And why should I?"

"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. Or my personal favorite quote: Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much."

Don smirked and shook his head. "When you'd learned that?"

"After the Colby debacle." David said and slowed down further to have enough breath to explain. "As Colby was still in prison, my anger didn't hurt anybody except me. You and Megan have taught me that lesson."

Don started to sped up again. It was time to finish the conversation. There was a reason he wanted to run alone. "They wanted to kidnap my brother. That's unforgivable."

"Then at least stop thinking about it. Stop going over every report you can find with a fine comb time and time again. Stop going over the interrogation tapes. Give yourself time to cool down," David said.

"Why?"

"Because the more you think about it, the angrier you will become."

Don growled before he focused on the road ahead, running faster and faster until he finally couldn't hear David's steps beside him anymore. In his anger, he didn't turn around to see David's worried expression. He just continued on his path, running faster.

* * *

"If I'd know we had the fed, I would have killed him. Next time I won't be so stupid again."

Charlie almost dropped the receiver as he heard the harshly spoken words. With difficulty, he managed to stay and not run away. Raising his head, he looked at Ron Silar. Charlie hoped for a sign that the words were just a form of blustering but Ron's expressions underlined how seriously he was.

Looking over to David, Charlie drew strength from David's unswerving attitude. Charlie wet his lips before he managed to speak. "Ron, what happened to the student who came from Fresno to learn how to build robots and solar collectors, two years ago?" Even his own father had been drawn back to campus because of robots. It may have not been the sole reason or Ron Silar wouldn't have picked biomechanics but it was usually part of the reasoning.

Ron snorted. "He got a wake up call. We don't have time to do it the classic way with sit-ins and so on. The antiwar movement had thought they had succeeded but thirty years later, we're back at war, killing innocents and destroying nature by producing and using weapons. Do you call this success?"

Charlie swallowed hard. From the other two, Serena and Horatio, he had learned about the effects of seeing just the now and betting survival against humanity. But he didn't know what he could learn from this hard and cold man sitting in front of him, just separated by a glass. "How would the death of my brother have changed that?"

"Somebody has to make them feel the urgency. Nothing changes, if we don't change it."

"And you wanted to go all the way including to kill another human being?" Charlie asked falling back into the routine of a teacher asking questions. "I thought you wanted to save the planet."

"You don't understand, do you? It's not the time to think about yourself. We all have to make sacrifices," Ron snarled.

"My brother Don is not a sacrifice." Charlie slammed the receiver down and stood up.

"You will see. One day you will understand that this is the only way. Waiting won't change anything. We're all going to die if we don't do something now. By the time the government and your brother comes around it will be too late. You'll see," Ron shouted, wanting and needing to be heard through the glass.

Charlie shivered as he caught Ron's intensive glare. Ron would have stopped at nothing. As long as he thought he was saving the planet, he would not slow down to consider his options, to consider the consequences. Turning on his heel, Charlie fled the room before the guards even reached Ron to take him back to his cell. Charlie just wanted to leave this place and the thousands of locks couldn't be opened fast enough for his taste.

Only after he had reached the outside and stepped into the bright and hot California sun, Charlie allowed himself to take a deep breath and release his tensed muscles again. He leaned forward and stemmed his hands on his knees, letting the sun warming up his back.

"Are you all right?" David asked and patted him on the back.

Nodding, Charlie slowly straightened back up. He looked to David, hoping that he could provide the missing answers. "Charlie," David said, apparently sensing his distress. "We call this radicalization. Take an issue and focus on it until it fills your entire horizon. In the end, they can't see anything else except that."

"And what can we do against this? It's a waste of talent," Charlie said. "A waste of life."

David put on his sun glasses. "Wasn't this one of your selling points in why you needed to talk to them? To develop an algorithm that spots the point of no return when passion turns into single-mindedness, when seeking justice turns into vigilantism?"

Charlie shrugged but couldn't come up with words to explain his thoughts. He wasn't even sure anymore if such an algorithm was possible. If he assumed that none of the three students had wanted to kill him or Don at first, then why did all of them deal so differently with what happened? It had to be something in their life, something that had been different. "I need my laptop."

"It's in the car," David said and smiled as if he had expected Charlie's request.

* * *

Frowning, Megan watched together with Colby as James Edward and his lawyer disappeared into the elevator. Edward's simple shirt and jeans didn't match the highly expensive suit his lawyer wore. The young man had been the only one of Horatio Cruz' high-school friends that had been worth to take a closer look. But Edwards had satisfied them that he had no longer any connection to Horatio nor any knowledge of the plan.

Megan took a deep breath after the elevator doors had closed. Now she had to explain this to Don. As he had no official say in the matter, it shouldn't be too hard, and yet she wanted to convince him. She still held onto the hope that if she could just convince him, Don would be able to let it go and go on with his life and not getting stuck forever in four hours on campus.

"You know Megan," Colby said, "it's a good thing that I'm just a low level agent and don't have to tell this Don."

Megan snorted and rolled her eyes. Turning around, she caught Don's glare. Of course, he would have watched them. "Good luck," Colby murmured and started in the opposite direction. With a sigh and a plastic smile, Megan went over to Don.

"And?" Don asked, his arms crossed.

"Nothing. He made it clear that he had changed his views."

"But he is working in the oil industry, right?"

"Yes. He followed his father's footstep a year after he finished high school and is taking now classes in his spare time to earn his degree."

"And what did he do that year after high school?"

"Campaigning for climate protection." Megan had to give it to Charlie and Colby, they really had found the needle in the stack.

"What's with the lawyer?" Don asked and indicated with his chin to the elevator where the lawyer and Edward had disappeared.

"You can still make a lot of money in this business. And Edward apparently knows when to go to his boss."

"Should we warn his employer?"

"Don, he's chosen to make money to make a living over any ideals he has expressed in his senior year in high school and afterwards. His employer knows about his past. He was actually hired because of it." Megan had recognized it right away, how the people behind James Edwards were building him up. If they continued on this path, they had him ready to be their face whenever a group of protesters would beleaguer them, a pleasant and understanding guy representing them.

Don nodded again. He pressed his fingertips so tightly against his upper arms that they were white, probably leaving marks on his arms.

"There were only three," Megan repeated her conclusion. Again, she tried to convince him, hoping to help him to draw a line under the events. "Nobody except Ron Silar, Horatio Cruz and Serena Dillons planned this. Nobody else was brought into the loop. Nobody had helped them with the execution of the plan."

"I know," Don snarled with so much fury, Megan took a step back at the unexpected words and emotion. "I know!"

Pushing away from his desk, Don rubbed at his eyes and stalked off before Megan could more than gape at him.

Megan bit her lip, contemplating if she should follow him or leave him alone but as she looked after Don, she saw Colby changing direction and following Don. Swallowing hard, Megan pinched the bridge of her nose. She had wanted that Don could leave this behind him. She just wished it wouldn't hurt so much.

* * *

Charlie sat next to the pond and watch the koi. Their behavior at least made sense. They changed direction based on temperature, current, food supply and contact with the enemy. Mapping out the behavior of koi seemed far easier than doing the same thing for the human brain.

A long shadow fell across the pond. Charlie looked up. "Didn't see you coming," he said to Amita.

"And?" she asked and grouched down beside him.

The open-ended question could be answered in a lot of ways, but Charlie had a good inkling what Amita really wanted to know. "Serena is really sorry. Horatio has his regrets, but Ron is just angry." The emotions of the last few days still clung to his skin, never letting him forget what had happened and what almost had happened.

"And you?"

"I still don't know what to think." Charlie held out his hand for Amita who took it without hesitation. "Or how I can help Don."

"Your network analysis is done?"

Charlie nodded. "There's no network, no group, no nothing. There's no bigger conspiracy and no mastermind behind all of it."

"Isn't this a good thing?" Amita moved her hair out of her face with her free hand but the wind just pushed it back.

"Not for Don," Charlie mumbled. "Don had wanted so badly to find something. It was the first thing he asked for."

"I think I can understand him. You can't fight an enemy you can't see. If you can't find an enemy you can't protect yourself or your brother from another attack."

"It's not only that but also the powerlessness. In this game, we, Don and I, are just a pawn in the big ocean, trashed around. If there had been a bigger group, a network or anything, then we could have navigated the ocean. But this ..." Charlie trailed off.

"How did Don take your result?"

"He knew it already. My work was just the confirmation."

"Or maybe his last hope."

"Or his last hope," Charlie agreed.

"And now?"

"I'm a teacher and have faced three students who would have been willing to hurt or kill me because they assumed to be able to make a point with that."

Amita shivered beside him. "Since that day, I wished I had a Kevlar vest like Don to protect me whenever I'm on campus. I know this is stupid but -"

"It's not stupid," Charlie said and turned to his girlfriend. Carefully taking her chin into his hands he pulled her near. "That's not stupid." He leaned forward and kissed her.

As they separated again, Amita wiped away a small tear from her eye. "I'm so thankful that they hadn't grabbed you. I know that Don hasn't deserved this, but he's so -"

"Strong?" Charlie suggested. "I still think it's unfair. It should have been me."

"Why? What would have been better?" Amita asked and another tear found its way down her cheek.

"Because Don would have made them pay in a way I'm unable to do." Charlie kissed Amita hand he still held. "I could feel safe at home and I wouldn't have to worry about anything."

"Well, this time Charlie I have to disagree with you. You visited all three of them behind bars. You confronted them with their mistake and you asked them questions that maybe will be the key to unlock their mindset. You did make them pay, subtle but not less effective. You hit them, where it hurt and it won't fade like a bruise."

Charlie leaned forward until he could rest his head on her shoulder. One of Amita's tears dropped onto his head and run down his head.

"I have another idea," Amita said sniffling. "Let just grow your hair back. I liked the curls."

"Hey," Charlie straightened up. "That had been an accident!" he exclaimed. But then he saw Amita's smile and also started to smile.

"By the way, Millie has offered me a new role at CalSci."

"Yeah, as what?"

Amita wiped away the last tears. "She wants to me to offer hours to reach out to the students who are desperate. Millie is also asking others to do so, so we can cover as many groups as possible." She blew her nose.

Charlie frowned. He hadn't been asked yet. Maybe Millie didn't dare to come near him as long as she hadn't apologized to Don. "And what does Millie want you to do?"

"Well, desperation happens if your ability to deal with or endure your circumstances isn't sufficient for your problem anymore."

"Dr. Finch is still thinking like a mathematician, using math to get back everything into a balance."

"Yes. Millie thinks that if we had caught the desperation of the Ron, Horatio and Serena, we could have helped them."

Charlie snorted. "Funny, I never took Millie for so overly idealistic. How would you have help them? Seriously, Amita, how? I've just talked to them and I don't think rational arguments can reach them anymore."

"That's the reason I haven't said yes yet; because I don't know how. But I want to help. I don't want to see ever something like this happen again."

Charlie looked back to the pond. "Questions," he mumbled. "You need to ask questions. Don't let them run with a plan without thinking about how their plan is supposed to end and if the end is worth it." He looked back to his girlfriend. "Think like a mathematician. Warn them to consider the cost. Ask them if the cost is worth the price. Ask them if their solution actually helps with the balance or if it's just an act of desperation."

Maybe Larry had always been right. Neither answers nor understanding were important, but the questions you asked. If you don't like an answer, then you have to ask a different question. Charlie hadn't found an answer, but he had found good questions.

Amita leaned her head against Charlie's shoulder. Together they watched the koi.

* * *

__TBC_ _


	8. Part II - Aftermath 5

"Thanks," Don said after the car had stopped.

"You're welcome," Colby replied from the driver's seat.

Don removed his seat belt. Out of the corner of his eyes, he glanced at Colby. "You know that the thanks also include the -" he shrugged.

"That you almost smashed your hand through the bathroom wall?" Colby glanced at Don.

Don sighed. That hadn't been one of his best moments. If Colby hadn't been there to stop him, he would have ended up in the emergency room with a shattered hand that may or may not heal again. Punching a hole in the wall only looked awesome in the movies.

"You're welcome for that, too." Looking away and through the windshield, Colby drummed with his fingers on the steering wheel.

Having said what needed to be said, Don started to open the door.

"Don," Colby suddenly said, stopping him. "Our first case with Dwayne, you remember?"

Don closed the door and looked back to Colby. "Sure." He didn't know if he was hoping for another subject to talk about or wanting to flee in case this was the start of round three of Dwayne versus Colby.

"Do you know what you said to me back then?"

With a shrug, Don prompted Colby to continue. Don remembered a lot, but he had no idea what part Colby was referring to.

"You said that you had never seen combat but that you had seen your fair share of firefights. And the only thing you feared was to let your guys down."

Don remembered the moment on the pier. Colby had stood in front of him, insecure and trustworthy. Don had believed his agent, not expecting that Colby could be working undercover. "I also said that if you do it again, you'd go to jail. I think, I kept that promise."

Colby snorted. "Yes and yes you did. But the point is that powerlessness didn't scare you but to let us down. And you didn't let us down. Never." He removed his sunglasses and shifted in his seat to show his seriousness. "On this Chinese ship, I knew that I would die if you didn't come. It was simple as that. If you had given up on me, if I hadn't been able to convince you, then I would be dead." Colby gaze went back to the windshield and whatever memory it reflected.

"Couldn't let that happened," Don said and grinned. "My hand wouldn't have survived the hole in the wall."

Colby replied with a smirk on his face. "Back then you also were caught out of luck - I mean you had to arrest one of your agents for treason, nothing more and nothing less."

"Fun times, just ask David." Don leaned back and closed his eyes, suddenly feeling tired.

"I did. And I know that David couldn't get over it, he couldn't get over his anger. I was the target of a lot of this anger, but apparently it wasn't anything compared to before according to Megan."

"And?" Don was running out of patience. Something that happened a lot lately.

"But you helped me to stay here. I'm sure you know the difference between yourself and David in this situation. You welcomed me back, David wished he wouldn't have to see me ever again."

Don exhaled deeply. In a way Colby was right. The weeks after Colby's return to the team had been difficult. He had given Colby and David time to work it out, all the while hoping that they would just get on. Maybe now it was his turn to get on, get on with his life.

"Your father has invited us over for Sunday," Colby suddenly said as if he sensed that Don was at the end of his rope for a conversation like that. "Is this a celebration or an intervention? For one of the two options, I'm going to show up."

Chuckling, Don shot Colby a quick smirk. "He wants to celebrate. I think he wants to show us, that despite all, we should be thankful because we got lucky. It could have ended far differently."

"A wise man. Are you going to be there?"

"Do you think my father would accept no for answer?" Don used the opportunity to open the door and jump out of the car.

"Yes, I actually do think that Alan would accept no for an answer," Colby answered. "But be prepared to hear about it for the next ten years."

Don snorted, shut down the door behind him and waved his goodbye.

* * *

Charlie closed the door softly behind him, not wanting to wake his father if he had already retired for the night. He just came home from a meeting with the dean about what had happened. Afterwards, he had had a long conversation with Millie. While she would continue her support for Serena Dillons, something she considered her duty as her teacher, she had apologized for her words to Don. By now, Millie had talked to everybody except Don.

"Charlie?"

Charlie jerked at the unexpected voice, before he recognized it. "Dad!"

Alan came in from the kitchen, switching the light on. "Charlie! How are you?"

"Why is everybody asking me that?" Charlie replied and put down his bag. He had ideas but the conclusion of his research still seemed inadequate.

"You're hurting, and we want to help," his father said and settled down in his armchair.

Slowly, Charlie came over, and sat down on the nearest armrest of the second armchair. "Ron Silar is so angry. In fact, everybody is so angry. Is there even another emotion out there anymore? Robin is angry that somebody almost killed Don, so am I. And the three students are so angry that the world doesn't change and -" Charlie broke off and looked helplessly to his father. "I cannot figure this out. I know I should just let it rest, but ..."

"And that makes you angry? Or fearful? You know, fear and panic lead to anger by an intermediate step called powerlessness. If you fear something but are not in the position to make significant changes, it leads to anger. The same can be said about powerlessness on its own. It's like Larry said back then. Be aware of this anger, look for outlets and channel this anger on things you can change and you want to change."

"But what if you cannot change things on your own?"

Alan crossed his legs. "Well, you have the same two options everybody gets, deal with it, either by changing your opinion, fighting or finding a compromise, or get dealt by it."

"Making a compromise? You were always telling us to stand up for what is right."

"Yeah, well," Alan said while a deep frown settled on his face. "I may have not stressed enough that you should first check if you're right. We are not always right, and it's good to remember that."

Charlie nodded. "What brought this on?"

Looking down, his father hesitated a moment, leaving Charlie wondering what he was thinking about. "Ways to protest that I would have defended forty years ago suddenly have the possibility to be wrong. Back then, our 'enemies' were also somebody's son or brother, they all had a history what had led them down this path, but I just couldn't see it. Don't misunderstand me, I still believe that what I did was the right thing to do, but maybe not the right way."

"So, what would you do differently now?" Charlie asked eagerly, maybe his father could provide him with the missing piece to understand it.

"I would take the time to learn about their reasoning and then I would develop a vision. I would stop telling people they are acting wrong, but create a vision, write a book, a TV show, a tool, a school, anything that's so much better that everybody wants to do it this way."

"But what if you don't have time for that?"

Alan snorted. "Let me give you a little advice. The time you spent to develop this vision, a vision a lot of people can share because it also would make their life better, is far better spend than the years and years of defending hard-won victories because the change you achieved has been forced upon unwilling people, who tend to fight back."

Charlie lowered his head. "The forth dimension."

"What?"

"Time," he said. "That's my missing forth dimension. It's what has been missing in my expression the whole time - we don't only have a brain, but a brain that's been used and what we have already done is an important factor in how we act."

Alan raised an eyebrow. "Fancy term for something I used to call experience and wisdom."

"No, Dad, not a fancy term but a matter of fact. I need to incorporate the age and life experience in my model." Charlie stood up. "Thanks dad."

"For what?" His father stared at him puzzled.

"For having dealt with your anger, so I can look up to you and see where I need to end up. By the way, how did you do it?"

"I'll tell you after I figured it out. But I know one thing, strong emotions overrule rational thinking for both good and bad. Without anger at injustices we would never progress. But with anger we also fall back to fighting without rules."

"And what do we about Don?"

His father froze, an expression of pain flickering across his face. "That's what my little celebration is for. It's time to remember to be thankful. Because a lot of things happened, but the worst things didn't." Alan heaved himself out of the armchair. "But for today, it's late. We both should be in bed. Where's Amita?"

"Still talking to Millie, about an idea Millie had. She'll be home soon," Charlie said. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw his father taking a deep breath as Charlie mentioned Millie. No matter how much Alan tried, his relationship with Millie had significantly cooled down. It was just a matter of time until their dating would fizzle out. Charlie glanced to the wall with their last family portrait. "I wish mom would be here. She would make everything better."

Alan followed his gaze. "I wish that, too."

* * *

Megan played with a ring on a finger. At work, she didn't wear jewelry but for a relaxing evening, as Alan had called it as he had invited her, it seemed appropriate. The whole house was decorated with flowers. But the relaxing part was still missing. Don still hadn't shown up and his absence had brought a nervousness to the conversation and atmosphere, everybody felt.

"I assume, Alan's timely call has its root in Don's absence?" Larry whispered while he leaned forward. Alan's phone had rung just as he was about to call Don.

Megan smiled as she caught a sniff of the perfume, Larry had felt necessary to wear. She nodded. After Don had reached the same conclusion that there was nothing else to it, he had become withdrawn and ... lost. He seemed lost. Lost because his preferred method to deal with the heavy blows life dealt had always been his work but now his work had provided the last blow.

"I guess Don had hoped for a different conclusion," David said, interrupting the illusion of a secret conversation at a full table.

"Nah, Don just wanted to make sense of it," Colby added his opinion. "But three students trying to kidnap Charlie doesn't make sense."

"Did you talk to Don, Charlie?" Megan asked, drawing the genius into their conversation. Alan had left the room and paced now in front of the house, still talking into his phone.

"Of course," Charlie answered. "But I also couldn't find a connection."

"Charles," Larry said, "I don't think Megan meant your endeavor to find a deeper and hidden network in normal student activities."

Grinning, Megan offered Larry her hand. "I was talking about the mistaken part."

Charlie looked down.

"Don said, that he doesn't blame Charlie," Robin explained while she checked her phone again. She had been the first to start sending texts to Don as she had come straight from Sacramento with just a short visit to her apartment. If her plane hadn't been canceled, she would have been back yesterday already. Then she would have come together with Don as they had planned.

"I know that," Charlie shot back. "But it's not so easy to not blame myself. It should have been me. And now I can't even help him because I can't find other conspirators and I can't explain it to him and -"

The front door opened and Alan came back, wearily and with hanging shoulders. Carefully, as if he had to think about every step, he walked to his place at the head of the table. "Well, I don't know how to say this, but ..." He hesitated.

"Don has canceled?" Megan asked trying to build a bridge for Alan. By now, everybody at the table had figured it out.

"Well, yes. Did you know?"

"No," Megan said. "But the timely call didn't leave a lot of other options, without being overly pessimistic." Then she paused, waiting for Alan to reach a decision whether he wanted to continue or cancel.

"He said he doesn't feel well and wants to try to get some sleep," Alan said and for once Megan was unable to read Alan. She didn't know if he was angry, sad or worried. Or maybe all of it at once.

Robin chuckled. "What?" she asked at the startled stares. "It's true. He really doesn't feel or sleep well, but usually he just ignores it and goes on as if nothing happened. I'm not sure if I should be happy that he finally got to a point where he can admit it, or if I should go -"

"-and strangle him." Charlie finished for her.

"As an ADA I can advise you that strangling is not a good option," Robin said with a straight face. "I would hate to have to prosecute you."

Some healthy laughing lifted part of the dark mood in the room.

"Well, food is ready and still warm and -" Alan lifted the first lid. "It's pancakes," Charlie assessed. "Don's favorite." And with that the whole room was again dunked into a heavy silence.

All of a sudden, Charlie stood up, his chair scratching on the floor, and he went to the front door, grabbing his jacket on the way.

"Where are you going? Charlie!"

"I can't! I can't stay here knowing that Don is all alone in his apartment and -"

"Charlie he needs time."

"I know. I know. And he can get all the time in the world. But not alone. Because sitting alone in the dark won't help," Charlie insisted.

"Then at least take some food." Alan jumped up. "Give me a minute to prepare it." Amita also jumped up to help Alan while David leaned back in his chair. "Don't try to make a conversation," David advised.

"Absolutely," Robin agreed. "But maybe you should bring a movie. Something you both can watch. It doesn't require words and you can do it together."

Charlie nodded eagerly, willing to take every advice he could get. "Sounds good. A movie and food."

"Beer," Colby added. "It's a good way to get a foot in the door."

"Charlie?" Megan also stood up and went over to Charlie. She needed to look him into the eyes to see if he really listened and understood what she was about to tell him. "Be prepared to leave whenever he wants you to go. Don't push."

"I won't." Charlie nodded earnestly. "I know how to do this. He's my brother."

Alan brought a big bag, enough to feed an army and that didn't even include the food still standing untouched on the table. Charlie accepted the bag and with a last glance across his shoulder, he left, closing the door behind him.

"Shall I fetch my radio in case LAPD gets a call?" Colby asked.

"Nah," Megan answered. "Charlie knows how to push Don's buttons but this is something Don knows how to deal with." She went back to Larry and stopped standing behind Larry, sending Alan a few glances. Alan seemed lost. He had invited his sons and their friends, and now both sons were gone but their friends were still there.

"It is a most excellent idea for Charles to drive to his brother," Larry broke the awkward silence while everybody tried to figure out how to bow out politely.

"Why?"

"Charles feels guilty and tries to find forgiveness," Larry explained.

"I don't think Don is even angry at him," David repeated the general assessment.

"Oh, I do not assume anger but Don has much more experience in dealing with guilt. Unqualified guilt for things beyond your control is something that comes with Don's job." He glanced to Megan. "And Megan's."

Colby snapped his fingers. "Ours, too," he said and pointed to David and himself. Megan glared at him, a move that was completely ignored. But Megan had to give it to Colby, he knew how to break the ice. "Of course, yours too." Larry accepted the interruption with much more grace than Megan would have. "But Charles is the solution to our current problem because he needs the help of his big brother." Suddenly, Megan understood what Larry was trying to say. She sat down next to him. "And by helping Charlie, he also gets back control and power." She gifted Larry with a beaming smile.

"Like I said, I think it's a very good idea for Charles to go to his brother." Larry was right. Don would reject help, but he would never reject the plea for help from his brother. Charlie was the solution, but not his math but the fact that he was Don's brother.

Alan cleared his throat. "Now that both of my sons apparently doing alone what I had planned to accomplish by this evening, you -"

"Alan," Larry interrupted him, raising his hand. "You also suffered greatly the last few weeks. Please allow us to provide some relief to you and help you to take your mind off the pain and fear." Megan felt the wetness in her tears as she reached for Larry's hand. No matter what Colby would say, she knew where Larry's beauty came from.

"Ah, well, then,-"

"Just say yes, Mister Eppes, Alan," David said, "I haven't eaten in a long time and your food smells delicious."

"Right," Alan said and clapped his hands together, his expression reflecting his affection. "Well, then dig in, I've made plenty."

And with Megan knew it would be successful evening.

* * *

_Don walked along the CalSci steam tunnels. They seemed longer than he remembered them. Breaking out into a slow jog, Don wanted to reach his destination faster. Suddenly, the walls around him vanished, and he jogged into a green garden. He slowed down until he came to a stop as he recognized the area. He had ended up in front of his parent's house. The old craftsmen house beckoned him over with a promise of a warm home._

_But just before he could reach the front door, three shapes blocked his way. Blinking, Don stopped. In front of him Ron, Horatio and Serena came out of a fog, and they had come prepared._ _Involuntarily, Don took a step back._

_"Well, well, isn't that the fed?" Ron sneered. "Not such a big boy without your goons?"_

_Don balled his fists._

_"Let him be," Horatio said, "he's just the brother of the guy we really want."_

_"Maybe we should let Serena deal with him," Ron said, "she had done it the last time really well."_

_"I'm busy. I have to prepare new data," Serena said._

_Don's fingertips dug into his palms until it hurt. This time he wasn't drugged. This time he would be able to fight_ _back._ _But as he took the first swing, the shapes disappeared in front of him. Just to reappear a few feet beside their original position._

_Again, they taunted him, but before Don could take their words to his heart, he also heard different voices speaking different words, words from his father, words from his childhood, words from his friends._

_"Think about the emotion behind their actions and you will find it in you to forgive them."_

_"Don't forget by forgiving them you actually acknowledge that they did you wrong or you wouldn't need to forgive."_

_"The only thing you can decide is how to deal with something. Nobody can force you to feel or think something. That's all your decision."_

_"They are not worth to occupy your thoughts and dreams."_

_"You don't need to understand it."_

_"I'm proud of you."_

_Slowly, he forced his hands to relax. Ignoring the shapes, Don walked in the direction he had last seen the craftsmen house._

_In a flash_ __, th_ _ _e shapes returned and blocked his ways. This time, they built themselves up in front of him. "Password?"_

_Taking a deep breath, Don knew what he needed to say. "I'll forgive myself. I'll forgive you and hope you rot in jail." As fast as they had appeared, they disappeared again. His way home was free and as he opened the door, he_ _was_ _greeted by his family and friends. "Hey, you're here." He opened his mouth to say something but then_ -

\- his eyes snapped opened. He recognized his bedroom right away. And as he lay in his bed, for the first time, he realized that he had just woken up from a dream without a racing heart. Glancing at his watch, Don read four o'clock in the morning. Better.

Against better knowledge, Don patted the bed beside him, but as expected it was empty. Robin hadn't come in without waking him. Before getting out of bed, he grabbed his cell phone and checked his messages to see if he had missed something important after he had muted it. Five missed messages. He sat up and went to the window, looking outside. Nothing at this image had changed and yet it seemed different. Without allowing himself to hesitate any further, Don opened the first message.

_"Hi sweetie, Charlie isn't back yet, so I went home to my apartment. Give me a call if you want to grab breakfast together."_

Don smiled at Robin's message. Definitely, he would give her a call. He couldn't remember why he had wanted to be alone. Now this desire was only a distant memory.

Next on the list was Colby.

_"You missed delicious food and Alan hasn't disowned you. Call me if you need help to hide the body."_

Don grinned. He sent a quick reply. "Charlie's fine!"

Next one was a message from David.

_I'm taking calls for the team tonight. Rest well._

David was to the point, Don acknowledged the text with a short reply. David deserved as much. Then there were only two left. He started with Megan, that sounded more doable.

" _I'm using my wildcard with Larry. David is the agent on call. If the world explodes, expect a call from him. P.S. Don't call me if you need help to hide the body."_

Shaking his head, Don didn't offer an answer to her. Megan could call Charlie herself. Last in the list, his father's name stared at him accusingly. He had never wanted that the party would become a casualty of this mess. He had never intended to cause his father pain. Before he could dwell on his thoughts, Don hit open and read the text. Maybe Colby would be right.

_"I hope you're feeling better now. Charlie has called and told me he stayed. There's some leftover from our little party. If you want to come over for lunch, I'd be happy to rewarm it."_

Don knew he didn't need to wait for Thanksgiving to feel grateful. Sending a quick prayer of thanks, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, enjoying the feeling of freedom.

After getting dressed, Don slipped out of his bedroom. In the doorway, he stopped as he saw Charlie sleeping on his sofa. With a smile, he tiptoed across the room and slipped into his running shoes. He still held his phone and only needed to grab his keys. As he looked back, his gaze was caught by the peaceful expression on Charlie's face. He could almost imagine the panic Charlie would fall into if he woke up and Don was gone. Not wanting to destroy the peace, Don took the time and wrote a fast note explaining his whereabouts and estimated time he would be back.

Softly, he closed the door behind him and left the house. Running in the mornings was a good way to stay healthy and fit for his job after all. In his mind, he went through the things he had to do today, none of it was dedicated to Ron and his friends. Instead, there were files that needed to be closed and send off to the DA, friends to say thanks. And if possible he knew already where he would take his lunch break. Just the two of them.

Charlie had warned him that Millie planned to talk to him today, but not even this prospect could keep him from smiling. As Don ran evenly, following his own rhythm, for the first time he didn't felt the desire to speed up. Instead, he was free to run at his own pace.

A bright smile graced his face, and he ran for the sake of running. Finally free from the dark cloud of anger, he could see the first signs of dawn again.

Freedom at last.

* * *

**END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading


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